Related papers: Galactic History: Formation and Evolution
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
Massive stars have a profound influence on the Universe, but their formation remains poorly understood. We review the current status of observational and theoretical research in this field, describing the various stages of an evolutionary…
We investigate the dependence of galaxy structure on a variety of galactic and environmental parameters for ~500,000 galaxies at z<0.2, taken from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data release 7 (SDSS-DR7). We utilise bulge-to-total stellar…
This article reviews the prevailing paradigm for how galaxies and larger structures formed in the universe: gravitational instability. Basic observational facts are summarized to motivate the standard cosmological framework underlying most…
We review knowledge of galaxy structures obtained by their emitted light and in the local universe where they can be studied in great detail. We discuss the shapes of, and stellar motions within, galaxies, compositional clues derived from…
Observations of circumstellar disks around stars as a function of stellar properties such as mass, metallicity, multiplicity, and age, provide constraints on theories concerning the formation and evolution of planetary systems. Utilizing…
Metals -- heavy elements synthesized during various phases of stellar evolution or during supernova explosions -- play a fundamental role in shaping galaxy evolution. In fact, their relative abundances, spatial distribution, and scaling…
Understanding galaxy formation is one of the most pressing issues in cosmology. We review the current status of galaxy formation from both an observational and a theoretical perspective, and summarise the prospects for future advances.
Present-day elliptical, spiral and irregular galaxies are large systems made of stars, gas and dark matter. Their properties result from a variety of physical processes that have occurred during the nearly fourteen billion years since the…
Galaxy haloes contain fundamental clues about the galaxy formation and evolution process: hierarchical cosmological models predict haloes to be ubiquitous, and to be (at least in part) the product of past merger and/or accretion events. The…
Studies of the resolved stellar populations in nearby systems are crucial to understand galaxy evolution. Here, we summarize how the interpretation of the colour-magnitude diagrams of field stars in late-type dwarfs inside and outside the…
In the first two years of operation JWST has delivered key new insights into the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early Universe. By combining imaging with spectroscopy, we discovered and characterised the first generation of…
The conditions that lead to self-regulated star formation, star bursts and the formation of massive stellar clusters are discussed. Massive stars have a strong impact on their environment, especially on the evolution of dwarf galaxies which…
Models of population synthesis for the Galaxy have been developed in order to understand galactic structure and evolution. They allow to test scenarii of evolution by comparisons between model predictions and observed distributions.…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…
How is the universe organized on large scales? How did this structure evolve from the unknown initial conditions of a rather smooth early universe to the present time? The answers to these questions will shed light on the cosmology we live…
Galaxy redshift surveys are outstanding tools for observational cosmology. Mapping the universe as outlined by galaxies leads to fundamental measurements which refine our knowledge of its structure and evolution. Redshift acquisition has…
I review the current state of our understanding of the galaxy formation and evolution process from the modeler's perspective. With the advent of the cold dark matter model and the support of fast computers and advanced simulation…
Future prospects in observational galaxy evolution are reviewed from a personal perspective. New insights will especially come from high-redshift integral field kinematic data and similar low-redshift observations in very large and…
The DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey is now well underway, having already measured the redshifts to ~5600 galaxies in its first season of observations. Here I briefly review the survey itself, before discussing in more detail some of the…