Related papers: The Formation of Galactic Bulges
From a diameter-limited sample of 86 `face-on' spiral galaxies, the bulge-to-disk size and luminosity ratios, and other quantitative measurements for the prominence of the bulge are derived. The bulge and disk parameters have been estimated…
The assembly of the Milky Way bulge is an old topic in astronomy, one now in a period of renewed and rapid development. The dominant scenario for bulge formation is that of the Milky Way as a nearly pure disk galaxy, with the inner disk…
Lenticular galaxies (S0s) represent the majority of early-type galaxies in the local Universe, but their formation channels are still poorly understood. While galaxy mergers are obvious pathways to suppress star formation and increase bulge…
Observations of the stellar content of the Milky Way's bulge helps to understand the stellar content and evolution of distant galaxies. In this brief overview I will first highlight some recent work directed towards measuring the history of…
The knowledge of the intrinsic three-dimensional (3D) structure of galaxy components provides crucial information about the physical processes driving their formation and evolution. In this paper I discuss the main developments and results…
Quantification of the Galaxy's star formation history involves both the duration and the rate of formation, with these parameters being known with different precision for different populations. The early rate of star formation is knowable…
A new idea is proposed for the origin of bulges in spiral galaxies. Numerical simulations for the protogalactic collapse suggest strongly that galactic bulges have been assembled from massive clumps formed in the galactic disks in their…
The metallicities derived from spectroscopic observations of a sample of Starburst Nucleus Galaxies (SBNGs) are compared to those of several other types of galaxies (normal giant galaxies, Irregular and HII galaxies) drawn from the…
A recent analysis of the IRAS database indicates that the massive star formation rates in early-type (Sa-Sab) spirals are comparable to the massive star formation rates in late-type spirals. $H\alpha$ imaging of some of the infrared…
We investigate bulge and disk scaling relations using a volume-corrected sample of early- to intermediate-type disk galaxies in which, importantly, the biasing flux from additional nuclear components has been modeled and removed. Structural…
The large-scale prints in The Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies have been used to formulate a classification scheme for the central regions of late-type galaxies. Systems that exhibit small bright central bulges or disks (type CB) are found to be…
I assess the similarities and differences between the star-formation modes in quiescent spiral galaxies versus those in violent starburst regions, including galactic nuclei. As opposed to the quiescent star-formation mode, current empirical…
Our knowledge on the central components of disk galaxies has grown substantially in the past few decades, particularly so in the last. This frantic activity and the complexity of the subject promote confusion in the community. In these…
We analyse a sample of about 2000 galaxies in 40 regular clusters, to look for evidence of segregation with respect to galaxy luminosities and morphological types. We find evidence of luminosity segregation for galaxies brighter than $M_R <…
The individual star formation histories of bulges and discs of lenticular (S0) galaxies can provide information on the processes involved in the quenching of their star formation and subsequent transformation from spirals. In order to study…
A tantalizing enigma in extragalactic astronomy concerns the chronology and driving mechanisms of the build-up of late-type galaxies (LTGs). The standard scenario envisages two formation routes, with classical bulges (CBs) assembling first…
The structure, formation, and evolution of the Milky Way bulge is a matter of debate. Important diagnostics for discriminating between bulge models include alpha-abundance trends with metallicity, and spatial abundance and metallicity…
The details of bulge formation via collapse, mergers, secular processes or their interplay remain unresolved. To start answering this question and quantify the importance of distinct mechanisms, we mapped a sample of three galactic bulges…
We present a novel interpretation of the previously puzzling different behaviours of stellar populations of the Milky Way's bulge. We first show, by means of pure N-body simulations, that initially co-spatial stellar populations with…
The dominant stellar population of the central bulge of the Milky Way is old, with roughly solar metallicity. The age is very similar to that of the old metal rich bulge globular clusters and to 47 Tucanae, which has an age of 13 Gyr.…