Related papers: Disentangling Stellar Age Estimates from Galactic …
I summarize in terms of evolutionary population synthesis models our current understanding of stellar populations in different environments, from star clusters in nearby galaxies to distant galaxies in clusters or seen through gravitational…
Status quo and perspectives of standard chemical evolution models of Local Group galaxies are summarized, discussing what we have learnt from them, what we know we have not learnt yet, and what I think we will learn in the near future. It…
Recent analysis of stellar populations in barred galaxies have focused on the spatial distribution of stellar population ages and metallicities. However, barred galaxies are complex objects where dynamical instabilities play a leading role…
The measurement of chemical abundances in planetary nebulae in nearby galaxies is now relatively straightforward. The challenge is to use these chemical abundances to infer the chemical evolution of their host galaxies. At this point, our…
The study of the ages of early-type galaxies and their dependence on galaxy mass and environment is crucial for understanding the formation and early evolution of galaxies. We review recent works on the M/L ratio evolution, as derived from…
Chemical clocks based on [s-process elements/alpha-elements] ratios are widely used to estimate ages of Galactic stellar populations. However, the [s/alpha] vs. age relations are not universal, varying with metallicity, location in the…
We live in an age where an enormous amount of astrometric, photometric, asteroseismic, and spectroscopic data of Milky Way stars are being acquired, many orders of magnitude larger than about a decade ago. Thanks to the Gaia astrometric…
Combined spectroscopic abundance analyses of stable and radioactive elements can be applied for deriving stellar ages. The achievable precision depends on factors related to spectroscopy, nucleosynthesis, and chemical evolution. We quantify…
To date, Galactic Astronomy has largely concerned itself with astrophysical processes, and with the locations, space motions and compositions of objects. Consider, for example, the elucidation of the components of the Galaxy over the past…
Phylogenetic methods have long been used in biology, and more recently have been extended to other fields - for example, linguistics and technology - to study evolutionary histories. Galaxies also have an evolutionary history, and fall…
We develop a hybrid model of galactic chemical evolution that combines a multi-ring computation of chemical enrichment with a prescription for stellar migration and the vertical distribution of stellar populations informed by a cosmological…
Since chemical abundances are inherited between generations of stars, we use them to trace the evolutionary history of our Galaxy. We present a robust methodology for creating a phylogenetic tree, a biological tool used for centuries to…
We have acquired intermediate resolution spectra in the 3700-7000 A wavelength range for a sample of 65 early-type galaxies predominantly located in low density environments, a large fraction of which show emission lines. The spectral…
The Milky Way was shaped by the mergers with several galaxies in the past. We search for remnant stars that were born in these foreign galaxies and assess their ages in an effort to put upper limits on the merger times and thereby better…
In this review I will discuss the comparison between model results and observational data for the Milky Way, the predictive power of such models as well as their limits. Such a comparison, known as Galactic archaeology, allows us to impose…
The bar/bulge and inner disk are fundamental building blocks of the Milky Way, containing a large fraction of its stellar mass. However, stars in these regions are faint, crowded, and have high extinction, which makes studying their…
We discuss the present state of knowledge and thought concerning the spread in age found among Galactic globular clusters, with some discussion of the implications for what happened during the earliest stages of the formation of the Milky…
Observations of the stellar content of the Milky Way's bulge helps to understand the stellar content and evolution of distant galaxies. In this brief overview I will first highlight some recent work directed towards measuring the history of…
Context. Stellar ages are typically very difficult to estimate for field stars. New empirical methods, based on abundance ratios of chemical elements, are emerging and need to be calibrated. Aims. Our main aim is to contribute to revealing…
The knowledge of stellar ages directly impacts the characterization of a planetary system as it puts strong constraints on the moment when the system was born. Unfortunately, the determination of precise stellar ages is a very difficult…