Related papers: Clustering with phylogenetic tools in astrophysics
These lecture notes concentrate on a few specific topics concerning the distribution of galaxies on scales from 0.1 to nearly 1000/h Mpc. The main aim is to provide the students with the information and tools to familiarize with a few basic…
Morphological classification is a key piece of information to define samples of galaxies aiming to study the large-scale structure of the universe. In essence, the challenge is to build up a robust methodology to perform a reliable…
The standard cosmological model, now strongly constrained by direct observation at early epochs, is very successful in describing the structure of the evolved universe on large and intermediate scales. Unfortunately, serious contradictions…
The cosmographic approach is gaining considerable interest as a model-independent technique able to describe the late expansion of the universe. Indeed, given only the observational assumption of the cosmological principle, it allows to…
Whether the "Hubble sequence" of galaxy morphologies exists up to z~4 is still disputed, and one of the challenges is characterizing galaxy structure consistently across a wide range of redshifts. To enable a fair comparison across cosmic…
I endeavour to provide a thorough overview of our current knowledge of high-redshift galaxies and their evolution during the first billion years of cosmic time, corresponding to redshifts z > 5. After first summarizing progress with the…
Explaining the formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the most challenging problems in observational cosmology. Many observations suggest that galaxies we see today could have evolved from the merging of smaller subsystems. Evolution…
In the early seventies, Alan Sandage defined cosmology as the search for two numbers: Hubble parameter ${{H}_{0}}$ and deceleration parameter ${{q}_{0}}$. The first of the two basic cosmological parameters (the Hubble parameter) describes…
The morphological classification of galaxies is considered a relevant issue and can be approached from different points of view. The increasing growth in the size and accuracy of astronomical data sets brings with it the need for the use of…
Galaxy-scale strong lenses in galaxy clusters provide a unique tool to investigate their inner mass distribution and the sub-halo density profiles in the low-mass regime, which can be compared with the predictions from cosmological…
In this paper, we focus on the study of starburst galaxies in their final billion years. Our galaxy selection is based solely on the presence of the H${\delta}$ absorption line, which permits tracing the later evolution of starburst…
One hundred years ago we did not know how stars generate energy, the age of the Universe was thought to be only millions of years, and our Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy known. Today, we know that we live in an evolving and expanding…
This talk investigates the formation of early-type galaxies from a deliberately observational view point. I begin by reviewing the conclusions that can be reached by comparing the detailed properties of galaxies in present-day clusters,…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
I review the general progress made in the study of galaxy evolution concentrating on the impact of systematic ground-based spectroscopic surveys of faint galaxies and high resolution imaging with Hubble Space Telescope. The picture emerging…
Galaxy haloes contain fundamental clues about the galaxy formation and evolution process: hierarchical cosmological models predict haloes to be ubiquitous, and to be (at least in part) the product of past merger and/or accretion events. The…
Observations of star formation rates (SFRs) in galaxies provide vital clues to the physical nature of the Hubble sequence, and are key probes of the evolutionary properties of galaxies. The focus of this review is on the broad patterns in…
Strong gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters is a fundamental tool to study dark matter and constrain the geometry of the Universe. Recently, the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields programme has allowed a significant improvement of…
Deep surveys conducted during the past decades have shown that galaxies in the distant universe are generally of more irregular shapes, and are disky in appearance and in their star formation rate, compared to galaxies in similar…
How and when do galaxies form? Studies of the microwave background radiation reveal that the Universe is spectacularly homogenous at redshift z~1000. Observations of the local Universe reveal that by z=0 much of the luminous matter has…