Related papers: Spiral Galaxies
This paper addresses the questions of what we have learned about how and when dense star clusters form, and what studies of star clusters have revealed about galaxy formation and evolution. One important observation is that globular…
We analyse $u-r$ colour distributions for several samples of galaxies in groups drawn from the Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For all luminosity ranges and environments considered the colour distributions are well…
In a large scale view of the universe, galaxies are the basic unit of structure. A typical bright galaxy may contain 100 billion stars and span tens of thousands of light years, but the empty expanses between the galaxies are much larger…
The availability of high-quality spectra for a large number of galaxies in the SDSS survey allows for a more sophisticated extraction of information about their stellar populations than, e.g., the luminosity weighted age. Indeed,…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
We combine deep optical and IR photometry for 326 spiral galaxies from two recent galaxy samples and report that the surface brightness profiles of late-type spirals are best fit by two exponentials. Moreover, the ratio of bulge and disk…
I set the stage for discussion of the stellar populations in interacting galaxies by looking back over the slow development of our understanding of these systems. From early anecdotal collections, to systematic cataloging, and finally to…
Galaxies are complex systems the evolution of which apparently results from the interplay of dynamics, star formation, chemical enrichment, and feedback from supernova explosions and supermassive black holes. The hierarchical theory of…
Although there has been much progress in understanding how galaxies evolve, we still do not understand how and when they stop forming stars and become quiescent. We address this by applying our galaxy spectral energy distribution models,…
Present-day massive galaxies are composed mostly of early-type objects. It is unknown whether this was also the case at higher redshifts. In a hierarchical assembling scenario the morphological content of the massive population is expected…
Careful inspection of large-scale photographs of Shapley-Ames galaxies seems to show a smooth transition between the morphological characteristics of galaxies located on the narrow red, and on the broad blue, sequences in the galaxian…
In the first section of these lectures I outline the classical framework of the Hubble classification system. Because of space limitations I will focus on points of controversy concerning the physical interpretation of the Hubble sequence,…
We reconstruct the history of the cosmic star formation in the universe by means of detailed chemical evolution models for galaxies of different morphological types. We consider a picture of coeval, non-interacting evolving galaxies where…
Many galaxies appear to have taken on their familiar appearance relatively recently. In the distant Universe, galaxy morphology started to deviate significantly (and systematically) from that of nearby galaxies at redshifts, z, as low as z…
This review aims to give an overview of the contribution of the Hubble Space Telescope to our understanding of the detailed properties of Local Group dwarf galaxies and their older stellar populations. The exquisite stable high spatial…
This paper presents a review of the topic of galaxy formation and evolution, focusing on basic features of galaxies, and how these observables reveal how galaxies and their stars assemble over cosmic time. I give an overview of the observed…
Present-day elliptical, spiral and irregular galaxies are large systems made of stars, gas and dark matter. Their properties result from a variety of physical processes that have occurred during the nearly fourteen billion years since the…
The observable characteristics and subsequent evolution of young stellar populations is dominated by their massive stars. As our understanding of those massive stars and the factors affecting their evolution improves, so our interpretation…
The morphology of a galaxy has been shown to encode the evolutionary history and correlates strongly with physical properties such as stellar mass, star formation rates and past merger events. While the majority of galaxies in the local…
Hierarchical galaxy formation is the model whereby massive galaxies form from an assembly of smaller units. The most massive objects therefore form last. The model succeeds in describing the clustering of galaxies, but the evolutionary…