Related papers: What can biologists say about galaxy evolution ?
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 cover a wide range of masses and star formation histories. In this review, I summarize some of the evolutionary key features of common galaxy types. At the high-mass end, very rapid, efficient early star formation is observed,…
In these three lectures a review is provided of the properties of galaxy systems as determined from optical and infrared measurements. Covered topics are: clusters identification, global cluster properties and their scaling relations,…
The present-day globular cluster populations of galaxies reflect the cumulative effects of billions of years of galaxy evolution via such processes as mergers, tidal stripping, accretion, and in some cases the partial or even complete…
Galaxies can be described by features of their optical spectra such as oxygen emission lines, or morphological features such as spiral arms. Although spectroscopy provides a rich description of the physical processes that govern galaxy…
The correlation between a galaxy's morphology and its observed optical spectrum is investigated. As an example, 4000 galaxies from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which possess both good quality spectra and have visually determined…
The determination of chemical abundances in star-forming galaxies and the study of their evolution on cosmological timescales are powerful tools for understanding galaxy formation and evolution. This contribution presents the latest results…
I review the basic concepts for the spectrophotometric and chemical evolution of galaxies, contrast various approaches and discuss their respective advantages and shortcomings, both for the interpretation of nearby and high redshift…
Gaia will identify several 1e5 white dwarfs, most of which will be in the solar neighborhood at distances of a few hundred parsecs. Ground-based optical follow-up spectroscopy of this sample of stellar remnants is essential to unlock the…
Phylogenetics is the study of the evolutionary relationships between organisms. One of the main challenges in the field is to take biological data for a group of organisms and to infer an evolutionary tree, a graph that represents these…
In this review I outline some ideas in chemical evolution, necessary for understanding the evolution of galaxies from measured elemental abundance ratios. I then discuss abundance results from studies of Local Group dwarf galaxies and the…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
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…
This aims to be an overview of what detailed observations of individual stars in nearby dwarf galaxies may teach us about galaxy evolution. This includes some early results from the DART (Dwarf Abundances and Radial velocity Team) Large…
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…
Understanding the formation and evolution of galaxy populations requires robust classification and characterisation techniques that jointly account for internal galaxy properties and environment. We analyse $5,306$ galaxies from the Galaxy…
The formation and evolution of galaxies can be followed in the context of cosmological structure formation using the technique of semi-analytic modelling. We give a brief outline of the features incorporated into the semi-analytic model of…
The investigation of the orientation of galaxies is a standard test concerning to scenarios of galaxy formation, because different theories of galaxy formation make various predictions regarding to the angular momentum of galaxies. The new…
Massive galaxies, such as nearby ellipticals, have relatively low number densities, yet they host the majority of the stellar mass in the universe. Understanding their origin is a central problem of galaxy formation. Age dating of stellar…
The aim of this paper is to cast light on the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies by means of N-body/hydro-dynamical simulations that include star formation, feed-back and chemical evolution. Particular attention is paid to the…