Related papers: Dwarf Galaxies: Important Clues to Galaxy Formatio…
I discuss recent theoretical work on the formation and evolution of galaxies paying particular attention to the ability of current models to make detailed comparisons with observations of the galaxy population both nearby and at high…
Over the past five years, searches in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data have more than doubled the number of known dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, and have revealed a population of ultra-faint galaxies with luminosities smaller than…
A number of years ago the estimates of astronomers and astrophysicists were that the earliest galaxies took about 2.5 to 3 billion years to form, that is, that they did not appear until 2.5 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Those…
Dwarf galaxies have attracted increased attention in recent years, because of their susceptibility to galaxy transformation processes within rich galaxy clusters. Direct evidence for these processes, however, has been difficult to obtain,…
In cold dark matter cosmologies, small mass halos outnumber larger mass halos at any redshift. However, the lower bound for the mass of a galaxy is unknown, as are the typical luminosity of the smallest galaxies and their numbers in the…
We apply a simple, one-equation, galaxy formation model on top of the halos and subhalos of a high-resolution dark matter cosmological simulation to study how dwarf galaxies acquire their mass and, for better mass resolution, on over 10^5…
The Local Group (LG) dwarf galaxies offer a unique window to the detailed properties of the most common type of galaxy in the Universe. In this review, I update the census of LG dwarfs based on the most recent distance and radial velocity…
The formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the great outstanding problems of astrophysics. Within the broad context of hierachical structure formation, we have only a crude picture of how galaxies like our own came into existence. A…
The formation of early-type dwarf (dE) galaxies, the most numerous objects in clusters, is believed to be closely connected to the physical processes that drive galaxy cluster evolution, like galaxy harassment and ram-pressure stripping.…
A comparison is carried out among the star formation histories of early-type galaxies (ETG) in fossil groups, clusters and low density environments. Although they show similar evolutionary histories, a significant fraction of the fossils…
The lowest luminosity (L < 10^5 L_sun) Milky Way satellite galaxies represent the extreme lower limit of the galaxy luminosity function. These ultra-faint dwarfs are the oldest, most dark matter-dominated, most metal-poor, and least…
In the first two years of operation JWST has delivered key new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. By combining imaging with spectroscopy, we discovered and characterised the first generation of…
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…
Although originally classified as galaxies, Ultra Compact Dwarfs (UCDs) share many properties in common with globular star clusters. The debate on the origin and nature of UCDs, and the recently discovered ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal…
Galaxies represent the visible fabric of the Universe and there has been considerable progress recently in both observational and theoretical studies. The underlying goal is to understand the present-day diversity of galaxy forms, masses…
Unless the nearby universe is subtly anomalous, it should contain a relatively normal selection of galaxies whose histories are representative of field galaxies in general throughout the Universe. We can therefore take advantage of our…
Several emerging links between high-redshift observational cosmology and the Galactic fossil evidence found in the kinematics, metallicities and ages of Milky Way stars are discussed. In a flat Cold Dark Matter model with $\Omega\simeq 0.3$…
What can we learn from the somewhat arduous study of old stellar populations in nearby galaxies? Unless the nearby universe is subtly anomalous, it should contain a relatively normal selection of galaxies whose histories are representative…
Galactic bulges are central to understanding galaxy formation and evolution. Here we report on recent studies using micro-lensing events to obtain spectra of high resolution and moderately high signal-to-noise ratios of dwarf stars in the…
The star formation histories of Local Group galaxies are summarized. The three large spirals are discussed individually, whereas the discussion of the Local Group dwarfs concentrates on differences and commonalities. While Local Group…