Related papers: Stellar Populations with ELTs
HST has recently revealed that many among the most massive globular clusters harbor multiple stellar populations, and --most surprisingly-- some of them are extremely helium rich. How these clusters managed to generate such complex stellar…
I discuss the age and helium abundance of the Galactic bulge stellar population. I present examples as to how age and helium abundance can be degenerate observationally, and thus, how unstated assumptions of the helium-metallicity relation…
Recent progress in studies of globular clusters has shown that they are not simple stellar populations, being rather made of multiple generations. Evidence stems both from photometry and spectroscopy. A new paradigm is then arising for the…
The history of galaxy formation via star formation and stellar mass assembly rates is now known with some certainty, yet the connection between high redshift and low redshift galaxy populations is not yet clear. By identifying and studying…
The build-up of stellar mass in galaxies is the consequence of their past star formation and merging histories. Here we report measurements of rest-frame optical light and calculations of stellar mass at high redshift based on an…
Uncertainties in stellar population models, both in terms of stellar evolution and stellar spectra, translate into uncertainties in our interpretation of stellar populations in galaxies, since stars are the source of most of the light we…
Some of the most massive globular clusters of our Milky Way, such as for example omega-Centauri, show a mixture of stellar populations spanning a few Gyr in age and 1.5 dex in metallicities. In contrast, standard formation scenarios predict…
This work presents high $S/N$ spectroscopic observations of a representative sample of nearby elliptical galaxies. These observations provide a strong test of models for the formation of elliptical galaxies and their star formation…
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;…
I review some recent progress made in our understanding of galaxy evolution and the cosmic history of star formation. The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) imaging survey has achieved the sensitivity to capture the bulk of the extragalactic…
The Galaxy's stellar populations are naturally classified into six `types', of which five have been observed. These are the thin disk (Pop I in the historical scheme), a discrete thick disk (Pop I.5), the metal-rich bulge, which was not…
We discuss the colour, age and metallicity gradients in a wide sample of local SDSS early- and late-type galaxies. From the fitting of stellar population models we find that metallicity is the main driver of colour gradients and the age in…
Nuclear star clusters are among the densest stellar systems known and are common in both early- and late-type galaxies. They exhibit scaling relations with their host galaxy which may be related to those of supermassive black holes. These…
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…
Until recently our knowledge of the Galactic Bulge stellar populations was based on the study of a few low extinction windows. Large photometric and spectroscopic surveys are now underway to map large areas of the bulge. They probe several…
Observational constraints and theoretical arguments indicate that cooled interstellar gas in bright elliptical galaxies forms into a young stellar population throughout the region within the half-light radius. The young population has a…
Massive stars play a fundamental role in shaping the evolution of galaxies through feedback, chemical enrichment, and their end products as neutron stars and black holes. Despite major progress in the last decade, key uncertainties remain…
We analyse the stellar content of a large number of HII galaxies from the continua and absorption features of their spectra using population synthesis methods, in order to gain information about the star formation histories of these…
We simulate deep images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) using semi-empirical models of galaxy formation with only a few basic assumptions and parameters. We project our simulations all the way to the observational domain, adding…
Hubble's long, stable astrometric baseline creates a rare opportunity for discovery in the Local Group and beyond. Many nearby galaxies, streams, and star clusters already have archival first-epoch imaging in hand, so future HST…