Related papers: Galaxy Masses
If compact baryonic objects contribute significantly to the dark matter in our Galaxy, their mass function will present vital clues for galaxy formation theories and star formation processes in the early Universe. Here we discuss what one…
Low-mass cluster galaxies are the most common galaxy type in the universe and are at a cornerstone of our understanding of galaxy formation, cluster luminosity functions, dark matter and the formation of large scale structure. I describe in…
In a large scale view of the universe, galaxies are the basic unit of structure. A typical bright galaxy may contain 100 billion stars and span tens of thousands of light years, but the empty expanses between the galaxies are much larger…
The recent observations of galaxy and dark matter clumpy distributions have provided new elements to the understating of the problem of cosmological structure formation. The strong clumpiness characterizing galaxy structures seems to be…
This work observationally addresses the relative distribution of total and optically luminous matter in galaxy clusters by computing the radial profile of the stellar-to-total mass ratio. We adopt state-of-the-art accurate lensing masses…
The definition of the galactic stellar mass estimated from the spectral energy distribution is ambiguous in the literature; whether the stellar mass includes the mass of the stellar remnants, i.e. white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black…
Galaxy groups and poor clusters are more common than rich clusters, and host the largest fraction of matter content in the Universe. Hence, their studies are key to understand the gravitational and thermal evolution of the bulk of the…
Massive stars have a profound influence on the Universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. We review the current status of observational and theoretical research in this field, describing the various stages of an evolutionary…
Weak gravitational lensing is rapidly becoming one of the principal probes of dark matter and dark energy in the universe. In this brief review we outline how weak lensing helps determine the structure of dark matter halos, measure the…
How stars are born from clouds of gas is a rich physics problem whose solution will inform our understanding of not just stars but also planets, galaxies, and the universe itself. Star formation is stupendously inefficient. Take the Milky…
Observations of the clustering of galaxies can provide useful information about the distribution of dark matter in the Universe. In order to extract accurate cosmological parameters from galaxy surveys, it is important to understand how the…
The star formation rate in galaxies is well known to correlate with stellar mass (the `star-forming main sequence'). Here we extend this further to explore any additional dependence on galaxy surface brightness, a proxy for stellar mass…
We present evidence that there is a significant correlation between the fraction of a galaxy's mass that lies in its central black hole and the age of the galaxy's stellar population. Since the absorption line indices that are used to…
The bulge is a region of the Galaxy of tremendous interest for understanding galaxy formation. However measuring photometry and kinematics in it raises several inherent issues, such as severe crowding and high extinction in the visible.…
Dark matter has been introduced to explain many independent gravitational effects at different astronomical scales, in galaxies, groups of galaxies, clusters, superclusters and even across the full horizon. This review describes the…
We discuss the formation of dark compact objects in a dark matter environment in view of the possible mass dependence of pulsars on the distribution of dark matter in the Galaxy. Our results indicate that the pulsar masses should decrease…
I outline the connections between some of the most widely used statistical measures of galaxy clustering and the fundamental issues in the theory of structure formation. I devote particular attention to the problem of biasing, i.e. to a…
In this Chapter I review the role that galaxy clusters play as tools to constrain cosmological parameters. I will concentrate mostly on the application of the mass function of galaxy clusters, while other methods, such as that based on the…
In the past years a wealth of observations has unraveled the structural properties of dark and luminous mass distribution in galaxies, a benchmark for understanding dark matter and the process of galaxy formation. The study of the…
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…