Related papers: Segue 1 - A Compressed Star Formation History Befo…
New observations indicate that ultrafaint dwarf galaxies (UFD) -- the least luminous systems bound by dark matter halos (<10^5 Lsun) -- may have formed before reionization. The extrapolated virial masses today are uncertain with estimates…
Metal-poor stars provide the fossil record of Galactic chemical evolution and the nucleosynthesis processes that took place at the earliest times in the history of our Galaxy. From detailed abundance studies of low mass, extremely…
Star formation histories (SFHs) are essential for understanding galaxy formation and evolution. We present the mean SFHs of 148 dwarf lenticular galaxies (dS0s) derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectra. These SFHs reveal two…
We have used high-resolution spectra obtained with the multifiber facility FLAMES at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory to derive kinematic properties and chemical abundances of Fe, O, Mg and Si for 89 stars in…
Detailed elemental-abundance patterns of giant stars in the Galactic halo measured by APOGEE-2 have revealed the existence of a unique and significant stellar sub-population of silicon-enhanced ([Si/Fe]$\gtrsim +0.5$) metal-poor stars,…
We present a detailed chemical abundance and kinematic analysis of six extremely metal-poor ($-4.2 \leq$ [Fe/H] $\leq-$2.9) halo stars with very low neutron-capture abundances ([Sr/H] and [Ba/H]) based on high-resolution Magellan/MIKE…
We study dwarf galaxies in the Centaurus A group to investigate their metallicity and possible environmental effects. The Centaurus A group (at ~4 Mpc from the Milky Way) contains about 50 known dwarf companions of different morphologies…
We discuss the star formation history of the Galaxy, based on the observations of extremely metal-poor stars (EMP) in the Galactic halo, to gain an insight into the evolution and structure formation in the early universe. The initialmass…
We present uniformly measured stellar metallicities for 463 stars in 13 Milky Way (MW) ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs; $M_V = -7.1$ to $-0.8$) using narrowband CaHK (F395N) imaging taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This…
We present the results of a low-resolution spectral abundance study of 25 stars in the Bootes I dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy. The data were obtained with the LRIS instrument at Keck Observatory, and allow us to measure [Fe/H], [C/Fe], and…
We study the formation of low-mass and extremely metal-poor stars in the early universe. Our study is motivated by the recent discovery of a low-mass (M < 0.8 Msun) and extremely metal-poor (Z <= 4.5 x 10^{-5} Zsun) star in the Galactic…
We present an abundance analysis based on high resolution spectra of 10 stars selected to span the full range in metallicity in the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We find [Fe/H] for the sample stars ranges from -1.35 to -3.10 dex and…
In this paper we study the very early phases of the evolution of our Galaxy by means of a chemical evolution model which reproduces most of the observational constraints in the solar vicinity and in the disk. We have restricted our analysis…
We use high-resolution simulations to show that the current standard paradigm for the growth of structure in the Universe predicts the formation of a galaxy like our own to differ substantially from the classic ELS and Searle/Zinn pictures.…
The chemical composition of stars with extremely low metal contents (taking ``metals'' to mean all elements other than hydrogen and helium) provides us with information on the masses of the stars that produced the first metals. Such a…
As the Universe emerged from its initial hot and dense phase, its chemical composition was extremely simple, being limited to stable H and He isotopes, and traces of Li. The first stars that formed had such initial composition. However,…
The aim of this paper is to set constraints of the epochs of early-type galaxy formation through the 'archaeology' of the stellar populations in local galaxies. Using our models of absorption line indices that account for variable abundance…
We address the question of the occurrence of star formation bursts in the solar neighbourhood by using the metallicity distribution of the G dwarfs. We present a method to recover the star formation history using simultaneously the…
We model the formation of star clusters in a dwarf galaxy progenitor during the first $700 ~{\rm Myr}$ of cosmic history using a cosmological radiation-hydrodynamic simulation with a sub-grid star formation efficiency (SFE) model calibrated…
In two previous papers, we presented simulations of the first galaxies in a representative volume of the Universe. The simulations are unique because we model feedback-regulated galaxy formation, using time-dependent,…