Related papers: Near-Field Cosmology with Local Group Dwarf Sphero…
The star formation histories of Local Group (LG) dwarf galaxies and more distant potential LG members are reviewed. Problems in defining the spatial extent of the LG and membership are briefly discussed. The morphological types found in the…
In this contribution initial results are presented from a program to study in detail the stellar populations of dwarf Spheroidal (dSph) galaxies in three nearby groups. The long-term aim of the program is to assess the influence of…
A number of mechanisms have been proposed to connect star-forming dwarf irregular galaxies with the formation of non-star-forming dwarf spheroidal galaxies, but distinguishing between these mechanisms has been difficult. We use the Via…
The characteristics and properties of the stellar populations and evolutionary histories of Local Group galaxies are summarized and compared to predictions of cosmological models. No clear signature of the re-ionization epoch is observed;…
We compare the properties of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group with the simulated galaxies formed before reionization in a cosmological simulation of unprecedented spatial and mass resolution,including radiative feedback effects. We find…
We use a combination of high-resolution gasdynamics simulations of high-redshift dwarf galaxies and dissipationless simulations of a Milky Way sized halo to estimate the expected abundance and spatial distribution of the dwarf satellite…
In this paper, we examine whether tidal forces exerted by the Galaxy or M31 have an influence on the Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) which are their companions. We focus on the surface brightness profiles of the dSphs,…
We present uniformly measured star formation histories (SFHs) of 40 Local Group dwarf galaxies based on color-magnitude diagram (CMD) analysis from archival Hubble Space Telescope imaging. We demonstrate that accurate SFHs can be recovered…
The fundamental manifold (FM), an extension of the fundamental plane formalism, incorporates all spheroid-dominated stellar systems from dwarf ellipticals up to the intracluster stellar populations of galaxy clusters by accounting for the…
We report on the discovery of three new dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. These galaxies are found in new CFHT/MegaPrime g,i imaging of the south-western quadrant of M31, extending our extant survey area to include the majority of the…
We argue that, at least a fraction of the newly discovered population of ultra-faint dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Local Group constitute the fossil relic of a once ubiquitous population of dwarf galaxies formed before reionization with…
The dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) in the Local Group are excellent systems on which we can test theories of galaxy formation and evolution. Color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) containing many thousands of stars from the asymptotic giant…
The local group dwarf spheroidal galaxies (LG dSphs) are among the most promising astrophysical targets for probing the small scale structure of dark matter (DM) subhalos. We describe a method for testing the correspondence between proposed…
40 galaxies are currently known as, or suspected to be Local Group members within a radius of 1.8 Mpc. 37 of these galaxies are dwarf galaxies with M_B > -18.5 mag. I present a compilation of the star formation histories of dwarf…
Dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies present an evolutionary puzzle that we explore in 40 early- and late-type dwarfs in the Local Group and nearby field. Although dSphs formed stars over extended periods, today all but one are free of…
The Local Group contains some dwarf galaxies that apparently formed all their stars early, lost their gas to winds or ionization, and survive today as ``fossils'' from the epoch of reionization. This study presents new models of these…
Using the "Updated Nearby Galaxy Catalog", we consider different properties of companion galaxies around luminous hosts in the Local Volume. The data on stellar masses, linear diameters,surface brightnesses, HI-richness, specific star…
The dwarf galaxies of the Local Group can be separated in three morphological groups: irregular, elliptical and spheroidal. As in the large galaxy clusters, there seems to be a morphology-position relationship: irregular galaxies are…
We explore whether Local Group dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies might have hosted Earth-like planets dwelling unexposed for several billions of years to major galactic threats to life, such as supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. To this aim,…
We present a large sample of fully self-consistent hydrodynamical Nbody/Tree-SPH simulations of isolated dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs). It has enabled us to identify the key physical parameters and mechanisms at the origin of the…