Related papers: The formation of compact dwarf ellipticals through…
The discovery of a population of massive, compact and quiescent early-type galaxies has changed the view on plausible formation scenarios for the present day population of elliptical galaxies. Traditionally assumed formation histories…
Multiple, sequential mergers are unavoidable in the hierarchical build-up picture of galaxies, in particular for the minor mergers that are frequent and highly likely to have occured several times for most present-day galaxies. However, the…
Spatial clustering nature of galaxies have been studied previously through auto correlation function. The same type of cross correlation function has been used to investigate parametric clustering nature of galaxies e.g. with respect to…
Galactic spheroids can form as a result of galaxy interactions and mergers of disks. Detailed analyses of the photometric properties, the intrinsic orbital structure, the line-of-sight velocity distributions and the kinemetry of simulated…
The tightness of the observed colour-magnitude and Mg$_{2}$- velocity dispersion relations for elliptical galaxies has often been cited as an argument against a picture in which ellipticals form by the merging of spiral disks. A common view…
Recent studies have shown that massive galaxies in the distant universe are surprisingly compact, with typical sizes about a factor of three smaller than equally massive galaxies in the nearby universe. It has been suggested that these…
The most massive galaxies in the present-day Universe are found to lie in the centres of rich clusters. They have old, coeval stellar populations suggesting that the bulk of their stars must have formed at early epochs in spectacular…
Understanding the formation of globular clusters will help us to constrain the evolutionary history of galaxies. For mergers on-going today, it appears that the number of newly created proto-globulars varies with the progenitor types and…
The structural properties of elliptical galaxies are consistent with their formation in a merging hierarchy. In this picture, the role of gaseous processes and dissipation decreased with increasing mass creating preferentially rotationally…
We take advantage of the largest high-resolution simulation of cosmic structure growth ever carried out -- the Millennium Simulation of the concordance LambdaCDM cosmogony -- to study how the star formation histories, ages and metallicities…
Under the merger hypothesis, elliptical galaxies are built through mergers of gas-rich spirals. However, the relative paucity of HI in most normal ellipticals demands significant processing of atomic gas into other forms if this process is…
Scaling relations are fundamental tools for exploring the morphological properties of galaxies and understanding their formation and evolution. Typically, galaxies follow a scaling relation between mass and size, measured by effective…
Growing evidence has been accumulated for that some gas-rich dwarf galaxies are formed from material liberated by galaxy collisions and/or mergers. Also, gas-poor dwarf elliptical galaxies are often found in the central regions of clusters…
We consider the hypothesis that the formation of elliptical galaxies includes a phase in which star formation is mostly restricted to massive stars, with the bias towards high mass stars increasing with elliptical galaxy mass. The mass…
The physical mechanisms and timescales that determine the morphological signatures and the quenching of star formation of typical (~L*) elliptical galaxies are not well understood. To address this issue, we have simulated the formation of a…
A major goal of contemporary astrophysics is understanding the origin of the most massive galaxies in the universe, particularly nearby ellipticals and spirals. Theoretical models of galaxy formation have existed for many decades, although…
In the last decade, extended stellar clusters with masses in the range from a few 10^4 to 10^8 M_sun have been found in various types of galaxies in different environments. Objects with masses comparable to normal globular clusters (GCs)…
In order to investigate the formation mechanisms of the rare compact elliptical galaxies (cE) we have compiled a sample of 25 cEs with good SDSS spectra, covering a range of stellar masses, sizes and environments. They have been visually…
Recent surveys of star forming regions have shown that most stars, and probably all massive stars, are born in dense stellar clusters. The mechanism by which a molecular cloud fragments to form several hundred to thousands of individual…
In this contribution the discovery and properties of ultra-compact dwarf galaxies are presented, and their possible origin is discussed. This new type of galaxy resides in the cores of galaxy clusters. In the fundamental plane diagram of…