Related papers: Galactic Structure and Evolution: a decade of surv…
Dark matter is one of the pillars of the current standard model of structure formation: it is assumed to constitute most of the matter in the Universe. However, it can so far only be probed indirectly through its gravitational effects, and…
Galaxy morphology is a product of how galaxies formed, how they interacted with their environment, how they were influenced by internal perturbations, AGN, and dark matter, and of their varied star formation histories. This article reviews…
In a large scale view of the universe, galaxies are the basic unit of structure. A typical bright galaxy may contain 100 billion stars and span tens of thousands of light years, but the empty expanses between the galaxies are much larger…
Studies of stellar populations, understood to mean collections of stars with common spatial, kinematic, chemical, and/or age distributions, have been reinvigorated during the last decade by the advent of large-area sky surveys such as SDSS,…
Essentially everything of astronomical interest is either part of a galaxy, or from a galaxy, or otherwise relevant to the origin or evolution of galaxies. Diverse examples are that the isotropic composition of meteorites provides clues to…
The main ingredients of recent semi-analytic models of galaxy formation are summarised. We present predictions for the galaxy clustering properties of a well specified LCDM model whose parameters are constrained by observed local galaxy…
Over the last decade Galactic planetary nebula discoveries have entered a golden age due to the emergence of high sensitivity, high resolution narrow-band surveys of the Galactic plane. These have been coupled with access to complimentary,…
We briefly review some constraints (Owing to the limited number of pages of present review, only a sub-sample of the topics discussed during the talk are briefly summarized. For the interested readers we are pleased to send them upon…
Stellar evolution models are a cornerstone of young star astrophysics, which necessitates that they yield accurate and reliable predictions of stellar properties. Here, I review the current performance of stellar evolution models against…
Galaxy groups and poor clusters are more common than rich clusters, and host the largest fraction of matter content in the Universe. Hence, their studies are key to understand the gravitational and thermal evolution of the bulk of the…
The evolution of our Universe is strongly influenced by the attractive force of gravity. A key aspect of this evolution, therefore, is the merging of galaxies. Here, we explore the role of mergers in shaping the properties of massive…
Gravitational lenses can provide crucial information on the geometry of the Universe, on the cosmological scenario of formation of its structures as well as on the history of its components with look-back time. In this review, I focus on…
Over the last decade optical spectroscopic surveys have characterized the low redshift galaxy population and uncovered populations of star-forming galaxies back to z ~ 7. This work has shown that the primary epoch of galaxy building and…
Modern redshift surveys enable the identification of large samples of galaxies in pairs, taken from many different environments. Meanwhile, cosmological simulations allow a detailed understanding of the statistical properties of the…
A standard paradigm is now available for the recent evolution (z < 10) of structure on galactic and larger scales. Most of the matter is assumed to be dark and dissipationless and to cluster hierarchically from gaussian initial conditions.…
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…
The Thesis is an attempt to combine data from three previously independent areas - the structure and kinematics of stellar populations of the Galaxy, photometric and dynamical models of galaxies, and models of the dynamical and physical…
Stars are fossils that retain the history of their host galaxies. Elements heavier than helium are created inside stars and are ejected when they die. From the spatial distribution of elements in galaxies, it is therefore possible to…
I present a brief review of the stellar population properties of massive galaxies, focusing on early-type galaxies in particular, with emphasis on recent results from the ATLAS3D Survey. I discuss the occurrence of young stellar ages, cold…
Galaxy models are fundamental to exploiting surveys of our Galaxy. There is now a significant body of work on axisymmetric models. A model can be defined by giving the DF of each major class of stars and of dark matter. Then the…