Related papers: The evolution of galaxy formation
Timescales in astronomy comprise the largest range of any scientific discipline. In the construction of physical models, this circumstance may both be a blessing and a curse. For example, galaxy evolution occurs on typical timescales of…
Galaxies must form and evolve via the acquisition of gas from the intergalactic environment, however the way this gas accretion takes place is still poorly understood. Star-forming galaxies are surrounded by multiphase halos that appear to…
In this review, I give a brief summary of galaxy evolution processes in hierarchical cosmologies and of their relative importance at different masses, times, and environments. I remind the reader of the processes that are commonly included…
An objective prism H alpha survey has shown that there is a population of early type spiral galaxies in nearby clusters with strong central bursts of star formation which could be due to galaxy--galaxy tidal interactions. Such galaxies are…
Future prospects in observational galaxy evolution are reviewed from a personal perspective. New insights will especially come from high-redshift integral field kinematic data and similar low-redshift observations in very large and…
Galaxy disks evolve through angular momentum transfers between sub-components, like gas, stars, or dark matter halos, through non axi-symmetric instabilities. The speed of this evolution is boosted in presence of a large fraction of cold…
(Abridged) In these lectures aimed for non-specialists, I review progress in understanding how galaxies form and evolve. Both the star formation history and assembly of stellar mass can be empirically traced from redshifts z~6 to the…
Some factors connecting the evolutionary histories of galaxies with the characteristics of their cluster systems are reviewed. Unanswered questions include: How is one to understand the observation that some globular cluster systems have…
The star formation history of a galaxy, explicitely here our Milky Way Galaxy, where the most detailed information is attainable, is the convolution of two functions. One function describes the rate of formation of the stars which are today…
The evolution of the star formation rate in the Galaxy is one of the key ingredients quantifying the formation and determining the chemical and luminosity evolution of galaxies. Many complementary methods exist to infer the star formation…
Most if not all stars form in star clusters. Thus the distribution of star clusters preserves the information on the star formation history of a galaxy. Massive clusters form only during episodes of high star formation activity whereas…
Star formation happens in a clustered way which is why the star cluster population of a particular galaxy is closely related to the star formation history of this galaxy. From the probabilistic nature of a mass function follows that the…
The study of the morphology of galaxies is important in order to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies and their sub-components as a function of luminosity, environment, and star-formation and galaxy assembly over cosmic time.…
The concept that stars form in the modern era began some 60 years ago with the key observation of expanding OB associations. Now we see that these associations are an intermediate scale in a cascade of hierarchical structures that begins on…
Studies of the resolved stellar populations in nearby systems are crucial to understand galaxy evolution. Here, we summarize how the interpretation of the colour-magnitude diagrams of field stars in late-type dwarfs inside and outside the…
Stars and planets are the fundamental objects of the Universe. Their formation processes, though related, may differ in important ways. Stars almost certainly form from gravitational collapse and probably have formed this way since the…
New observations in favour of a significant role of secular evolution are reviewed: central star formation boosted in pseudo-bulge barred galaxies, relations between bulge and disk, evidence for rejuvenated bulges. Numerical simulations…
This paper provides a critical discussion of the observational evidence for winds in our own Galaxy, in nearby star-forming and active galaxies, and in the high-redshift universe. The implications of galactic winds on the formation and…
Our Galaxy is a complex machine in which several processes operate simultaneously: metal-poor gas is accreted, is chemically enriched by dying stars, and then drifts inwards, surrendering its angular momentum to stars; new stars are formed…
At the turn of the decade we arguably move from the era of precision cosmology to the era of galaxy formation. One approach to this problem will be via the construction of comprehensive galaxy samples. In this review I take the opportunity…