Related papers: Primordial alignment of elliptical galaxies in int…
A sample of nearly 9000 early-type galaxies, in the redshift range 0.01<z<0.3, was selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using morphological and spectral criteria. The sample was used to study how early-type galaxy observables,…
Massive galaxy clusters are now found as early as 3 billion years after the Big Bang, containing stars that formed at even earlier epochs. The high-redshift progenitors of these galaxy clusters, termed 'protoclusters', are identified in…
We investigate the origin of color gradients in cluster early-type galaxies to probe whether pure age or pure metallicity gradients can explain the observed data in local and distant (z approx 0.4) samples. We measure the surface brightness…
We report the discovery of a statistically significant radial alignment of cluster galaxies in a sample of 85 X-ray selected clusters observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The tendency for alignment is a robust feature of our sample and…
We present the rest-frame colour-magnitude diagram for 35 early-type galaxies in the Hubble Deep Field with median redshift 0.9. Although with considerable scatter, a red sequence well-described by the passive evolution of an intrinsically…
New ground-based and HST observations of distant clusters make it possible to trace the history of E/S0 galaxies to lookback times of ~10 $h_{50}^{-1}$ Gyr. The data strongly favor a scenario in which cluster ellipticals formed very early…
We show how observations of the evolution of the galaxy cluster number abundance can be used to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity in the universe. We carry out a maximum likelihood analysis incorporating a number of current datasets and…
Using a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation of merging proto-galaxies at high redshift from the FIRE project, with explicit treatments of star formation and stellar feedback in the interstellar medium, we investigate the formation of…
We study the clustering properties of the first galaxies formed in the Universe. We find that, due to chemical enrichment of the inter-stellar medium by isolated Population III stars formed in mini-halos at redshift z>30, the…
A number of recent numerical investigations concluded that the remnants of rare structures formed at very high redshift, such as the very first stars and bright redshift z~6 QSOs, are preferentially located at the center of the most massive…
We use galaxy groups at redshifts between 0.4 and 1.0 selected from the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) to study the color-morphological properties of satellite galaxies, and investigate possible alignment between the…
We study the populations of stellar clumps in three high-redshift galaxies, at z=4.92, 4.88 and 4.03, gravitationally lensed by the foreground galaxy clusters MS1358, RCS0224 and MACS0940, respectively. The lensed galaxies consist of…
Despite the rapid observational progress in the study of young massive star clusters, the formation of globular clusters still remains poorly understood. Yet, it is emerging that globular cluster formation is intimately linked to the…
We explore the possibility of detecting the first galaxies with the next generation of space-based far infrared (FIR) telescopes by applying an analytical model of primordial dust emission. Our results indicate that FIR/sub-mm sources at $z…
Hierarchical galaxy formation models make specific predictions concerning the relative assembly rates and star formation histories of spiral bulges and field ellipticals. Independently of the cosmological model and initial power spectrum of…
We present the ellipticity distribution and its evolution for early-type galaxies in clusters from z~0.8 to z~0, based on the WIde-field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS)(0.04<z<0.07), and the ESO Distant Cluster Survey…
In a sample of 54 galaxy clusters (0.04<z<0.15) containing 3551 early-type galaxies suitable for study, we identify those with tidal features both interactively and automatically. We find that ~3% have tidal features that can be detected…
We create a catalogue of simulated fossil groups and study their properties, in particular the merging histories of their first-ranked galaxies. We compare the simulated fossil group properties with those of both simulated non-fossil and…
We present deep Keck spectroscopy for a sample of I<22.5 field early-type galaxies selected morphologically in the redshift range 0.56<z<1.02 in the HDF-N. Using velocity dispersions determined from the Keck spectra in conjunction with…
The standard picture holds that giant elliptical galaxies formed in a single burst at high redshift. Aging of their stellar populations subsequently caused them to fade and become redder. The Canada-France Redshift Survey provides a sample…