Related papers: Studying distant galaxies: A Handbook of Methods a…
It is possible to borrow from a topic of biology called phylogenetic systematics, concepts and tools for a logical and objective classification of galaxies. It is based on observable properties of objects - characters - either qualitative…
Many clues about the galaxy assembly process lurk in the faint outer regions of galaxies. Although quantitative study of these parts has been severely limited in the past, breakthroughs are now being made thanks to the combination of…
Top of the wish list of any astronomer who wants to understand galaxy formation and evolution is to resolve the stellar populations of a sample of giant elliptical galaxies: to take spectra of the stars and make Colour-Magnitude Diagrams…
The exploration and study of exoplanets remain at the frontier of astronomical research, challenging scientists to continuously innovate and refine methodologies to navigate the vast, complex data these celestial bodies produce. This…
This is the written version of an invited review talk for the 13 Feb 2004 AAAS Meeting in Seattle. The talk's goal is to present a philosophical view of extragalactic astronomy as it applies to the sub-field of galaxy evolution. The talk is…
The cosmic Middle Ages, spanning the last 8-10 Gyr of the Universe, is a critical period in which massive early-formed systems coexist with global star formation quenching in less massive galaxies, yet galaxies experience further dynamical,…
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey is now well underway, having already measured the redshifts to ~5600 galaxies in its first season of observations. Here I briefly review the survey itself, before discussing in more detail some of the…
In these lectures I review observations of star-forming molecular clouds in our Galaxy and nearby galaxies to develop a physical intuition for understanding star formation in the local and high-redshift Universe. A lot of this material is…
For more that seventy years, the measurements of fluxes of galaxies at different wavelengths and derived colours have been used to estimate their corresponding cosmological distances. From the fields of galaxy and AGN evolution to precision…
We illustrate the extraordinary discovery potential for extragalactic astrophysics of a far-IR/submm all-sky spectroscopic survey with a 3m-class space telescope. Spectroscopy provides both a 3D view of the Universe and allows us to take…
Our Galaxy blocks a significant portion of the extragalactic sky from view, hampering studies of large-scale structure. This produces an incomplete knowledge of the distribution of galaxies, and, assuming galaxies trace mass, of the gravity…
(Abridged) Context. This is the second paper of a series devoted to the WIde Field Nearby Galaxy-cluster Survey (WINGS). WINGS is a long term project which is gathering wide-field, multi-band imaging and spectroscopy of galaxies in a…
Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…
Our understanding of how the Galaxy was formed and evolves is severely hampered by the lack of precise constraints on basic stellar properties such as distances, masses, and ages. Here, we show that solar-like pulsating red giants represent…
For nearly a century, imaging and spectroscopic surveys of galaxies have given us information about the contents of the universe. We attempt to define the logical endpoint of such surveys by defining not the next galaxy survey, but the…
The main objective of my thesis was to provide us, for the first time, with a reliable view of the distant Hubble sequence, and its evolution over the past 6 Gyr. To achieve this goal, we have created a new morphological classification…
We report on our observing program to obtain integrated spectrophotometry, intermediate and high resolution major axis spectra, and U,B,R surface photo- metry of a representative sample of ~200 galaxies in the nearby field. The main goal of…
Over the past several decades, advances in telescope/detector technologies and deep imaging techniques have pushed surface brightness limits to ever fainter levels. We can now both detect and measure the diffuse, extended star light that…
During the last decade, the understanding of fine features of the structure and evolution of stars has become possible as a result of enormous progress made in the acquisition of high-quality observational and experimental data and of new…
The Hubble tuning fork diagram, based on morphology, has always been the preferred scheme for classification of galaxies and is still the only one originally built from historical/evolutionary relationships. At the opposite, biologists have…