Related papers: Extragalactic Star Clusters: Speculations on the F…
Galaxies and clusters embedded in the large-scale structure of the Universe are observed to align in preferential directions. Galaxy alignment has been established as a potential probe for cosmological information, but the application of…
The Galactic center offers us a unique opportunity to test General Relativity (GR) with the orbits of stars around a supermassive black hole. Observations of these stars have been one of the great successes of adaptive optics on 8-10 m…
We present an overview of observational progress in the study of extragalactic globular cluster systems. Globular clusters turn out to be excellent tracers not only for the star-formation histories in galaxies, but also for kinematics at…
The most obvious extragalactic targets for optical/infrared interferometers are Active Galactic Nuclei. In this document, I try to overview other topics that could be of interest to studies of galaxies and whether they could be adequate for…
New facilities and technologies have advanced our understanding of massive stars significantly over the past 30 years. Here I introduce a new large survey of massive stars using VLT-FLAMES, noting the target fields and observed binary…
So far, high resolution techniques on the one hand provide morphological information on bright nearby objects. On the other hand, telescopes with large collecting areas allow us to detect very faint and distant objects, but not to obtain a…
Future prospects in observational galaxy evolution are reviewed from a personal perspective. New insights will especially come from high-redshift integral field kinematic data and similar low-redshift observations in very large and…
Plans for the next generation of optical-infrared telescopes, the Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs), are well advanced. With primary apertures in excess of 20m, they will revolutionise our ground-based capabilities. In this review I…
Valuable insights into galaxy evolution can be gleaned from studies of resolved stellar populations in the local Universe. Deep photometric surveys have provided tracers of the star-formation histories in galaxies from 0.8-16 Mpc, but…
The next generation of large ground-based optical and infrared telescopes will provide new challenges for designers of astronomical instrumentation. The varied science cases for these extremely large telescopes (ELTs) require a large range…
The Galactic centre and its surrounding space are important in studying galaxy-scale evolution, and stellar populations therein are expected to have imprints of the long-term evolution. Interstellar extinction, however, severely limits…
Globular clusters play a role in many areas of astrophysics, ranging from stellar physics to cosmology. New ground-based optical surveys complemented by observations from space-based telescopes with unprecedented near-infrared capabilities…
We summarize some of the compelling new scientific opportunities for understanding stars and stellar systems that can be enabled by sub-milliarcsec (sub-mas) angular resolution, UV-Optical spectral imaging observations, which can reveal the…
The next generation of multi-object spectrographs (MOS) will deliver comprehensive surveys of the Galaxy, Magellanic Clouds and nearby dwarfs. These will provide us with the vast samples, spanning the full extent of the Hertzsprung-Russell…
I describe some of the current challenges in galaxy formation theory with applications to formation of disks and of spheroids. Forthcoming deep surveys of galaxies with Keck and VLT will provide high quality spectra of $\sim 10^5$ galaxies…
The direct images of giant extrasolar planets recently obtained around several main sequence stars represent a major step in the study of planetary systems. These high-dynamic range images are among the most striking results obtained by the…
In these proceedings I discuss various extragalactic surveys which will be undertaken over the next few years and which will be complementary to any HI and/or continuum surveys with the SKA-precursor telescopes. I concentrate on the…
In recent years, significant progress has been made in building new galaxy clusters samples, at low and high redshifts, from wide-area surveys, particularly exploiting the Sunyaev--Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. A large effort is underway to…
We present simulated J- and K-band observations of stars in the Virgo and Coma clusters of galaxies using the proposed Next Generation Space Telescope with a Near-Infrared Camera, and discuss some of the science results that might be…
Next-generation radio surveys are about to transform radio astronomy by discovering and studying tens of millions of previously unknown radio sources. These surveys will provide new insights to understand the evolution of galaxies,…