Related papers: Galactic Bulges
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 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…
The last 20 years have seen an explosion in our understanding of the large-scale distribution and motions of galaxies in the nearby universe. The field has moved from a largely qualitative, morphological description of the structures seen…
This is the first paper presenting our long-term project aimed at studying the nature of bulges through the analysis of their stellar population gradients. We present deep spectroscopic observations along the minor axis and the data…
Early-type galaxies, considered as large bulges, have been found to have had a much-more-than-boring star formation history in recent years by the UV satellite GALEX. The most massive bulges, brightest cluster galaxies, appear to be…
I review the understanding of bulges that emerged from the lively discussions and presentations during the meeting, and emphasize areas for future work. The evidence is for a diversity of `bulges', and of formation mechanisms.
The bulge is a region of the Galaxy of tremendous interest for understanding galaxy formation. However measuring photometry and kinematics in it raises several inherent issues, such as severe crowding and high extinction in the visible.…
The formation and evolution of galaxies is one of the great outstanding problems of astrophysics. Within the broad context of hierachical structure formation, we have only a crude picture of how galaxies like our own came into existence. A…
After presenting three ways of defining a bulge component in disc galaxies, we introduce the various types of bulges, namely the classical bulges, the boxy/peanut bulges and the disc-like bulges. We then discuss three specific topics linked…
Galactic bulges are central to understanding galaxy formation and evolution. Here we report on recent studies using micro-lensing events to obtain spectra of high resolution and moderately high signal-to-noise ratios of dwarf stars in the…
In this review our aim is to summarize the observed properties of pseudobulges and classical bulges. We utilize an empirical approach to studying the properties of bulges in disk galaxies, and restrict our analysis to statistical proper-…
Near infrared images from the COBE satellite presented the first clear evidence that our Milky Way galaxy contains a boxy shaped bulge. Recent years have witnessed a gradual paradigm shift in the formation and evolution of the Galactic…
We review the current theory of how galaxies form within the cosmological framework provided by the cold dark matter paradigm for structure formation. Beginning with the pre-galactic evolution of baryonic material we describe the analytical…
The Galactic Bulge can uniquely be studied from large samples of individual stars, and is therefore of prime importance for understanding the stellar population structure of bulges in general. Here the observational evidence on the…
Historically, galactic bulges are thought to be elliptical galaxy-like objects sitting in the middle of a generally larger disk. There are, however, more and more claims that some bulges are much more similar to disks. John Kormendy has…
I review several of the current issues in the theory of disk galaxy formation. There is sti ll much to be done, observationally and theoretically, before we can expect to approach an understanding of disk galaxies that is reliable enough to…
Bulges, often identified with the spheroidal component of a galaxy, have a complex pedigree. Massive bulges are generally red and old, but lower mass bulges have broader dispersions in color that may be correlated with disk colors. This…
Theories of how galaxies, the fundamental constituents of large-scale structure, form and evolve have undergone a dramatic paradigm shift in the last few decades. Earlier views were of rapid, early collapse and formation of basic…
I briefly review early and recent progress concerning the dynamical properties of bulges. I also show results from a study on the kinematics of bulges and disks in edge-on galaxies, where the bulge rotation curve is obtained with little…
The Milky Way bulge offers a unique opportunity to investigate in detail the role that different processes such as dynamical instabilities, hierarchical merging, and dissipational collapse may have played in the history of the Galaxy…