Related papers: What determines galactic evolution?
A model is presented for the chemical evolution of the solar neighbourhood which takes into account three families of galactic objects, according to their condensation states: stars, refuses and gas. Stars are defined as every condensed…
The past century of interstellar dust has brought us from first ignoring it to finding that it plays an important role in the evolution of galaxies. Current observational results in our galaxy provide a complex physical and chemical…
Star formation rate and accummulated stellar mass are two fundamental physical quantities that describe the evolutionary state of a forming galaxy. Two recent attempts to determine the relationship between these quantities, by interpreting…
Violent relaxation -- the protocluster dynamical response to the expulsion of its leftover star forming gas -- is a short albeit crucial episode in the evolution of star clusters and star cluster systems. In this contribution, I survey how…
Globular clusters are large and dense agglomerate of stars. At variance with smaller clusters of stars, they exhibit signs of some chemical evolution. At least for this reason, they are intermediate between open clusters and massive objects…
The quenching of star formation activity represents a critical phase for a non-negligible fraction of the observed galaxy population at all cosmic epochs, marking a transition from an epoch of intense mass growth to an extended period of…
This is the second paper of a series which aims at quantifying the uncertainties in chemical evolution model predictions related to the underlying model assumptions. Specifically, it deals with the uncertainties due to the choice of the…
The major questions relevant to star and planet formation are: What controls the rate, efficiency, spatial clustering, multiplicity, and initial mass function of star formation, now and in the past? What are the major feedback mechanisms…
I review the theory of hierarchical clustering, starting with an historical overview and moving on to a discussion of those aspects of dissipationless clustering under gravity which are most relevant to galaxy formation. I conclude with…
Massive stars are the drivers of the chemical evolution of dwarf galaxies. We review here the basics of massive star evolution and the specificities of stellar evolution in low-Z environment. We discuss nucleosynthetic aspects and what…
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…
The goal of this investigation is to reconstruct the cosmic star formation rate density history from local observations and in doing so to gain insight into how galaxies might have formed and evolved. A new chemical evolution model is…
A generalization of the multiphase chemical evolution model applied to a wide set of theoretical galaxies is shown. This set of models has been computed by using the so-called Universal Rotation Curve from Persic, Salucci & Steel to…
Studies of the resolved stellar populations in nearby systems are crucial to understand galaxy evolution. Here, we summarize how the interpretation of the colour-magnitude diagrams of field stars in late-type dwarfs inside and outside the…
Molecular clouds are the principle stellar nurseries of our universe, keeping them in the focus of both observational and theoretical studies. From observations, some of the key properties of molecular clouds are well known but many…
Principal component method is used to study galactic globular clusters in 7- and 8-axis space of structural parameters. It is shown that the manifold properties of clusters with this set of parameters is determined mainly by two independent…
Electron temperatures, densities, ionic and elemental abundances of helium, nitrogen, oxygen, argon, sulfur and neon were derived for a sample of bulge planetary nebulae, representative of its intermediate mass population. Using these…
These lectures will cover methods for studying the evolution of galaxies since their formation. Because the properties of a galaxy depend on its history, an understanding of galaxy evolution requires that we understand the dynamical…
The large amount of data on galaxies, up to higher and higher redshifts, asks for sophisticated statistical approaches to build adequate classifications. Multivariate cluster analyses, that compare objects for their global similarities, are…
We present results for the chemical evolution of the Galactic bulge in the context of an inside-out formation model of the Galaxy. A supernova-driven wind was also included in analogy with elliptical galaxies. New observations of chemical…