Related papers: The Formation and Evolution of Galaxies
Galaxies are not distributed randomly throughout space but are instead arranged in an intricate "cosmic web" of filaments and walls surrounding bubble-like voids. There is still no compelling observational evidence of a link between the…
The most successful cosmological models to date envision structure formation as a hierarchical process in which gravity is constantly drawing lumps of matter together to form increasingly larger structures. Clusters of galaxies currently…
The outer regions of galaxies are expected to contain important clues about the way in which galaxies are assembled. Although quantitative study of these parts has been severely limited in the past, breakthroughs are now being made thanks…
Selected results obtained in major observational sky surveys (DSS, 2MASS, 2dF, SDSS) and deep field observations (HDF, GOODS, HUDF, etc.) are reviewed. Modern surveys provide information on the characteristics and space distribution of…
The shapes of galaxies are not randomly oriented on the sky. During the galaxy formation and evolution process, environment has a strong influence, as tidal gravitational fields in the large-scale structure tend to align nearby galaxies.…
The alignments of galaxies across the large-scale structure of the Universe are known to be a source of contamination for gravitational lensing, but they can also probe cosmology and the physics of galaxy evolution in many ways. In this…
The largest galaxies acquire their mass early on, when the Universe is still youthful. Cold streams violently feed these young galaxies a vast amount of fresh gas, resulting in very efficient star formation. Using a well resolved…
Properties of nearby dwarf galaxies are briefly discussed. Dwarf galaxies vary widely in their star formation histories, the ages of their subpopulations, and in their enrichment history. Furthermore, many dwarf galaxies show evidence for…
Galaxy evolution depends strongly on the environment. Dynamical interactions and subsequent evolution make galaxies more concentrated, with higher surface densities, and also trigger star-formation, which consumes the available cold gas.…
In this review, we present a brief description of observational efforts to understand the Galactic thick disk and its relation to the other Galactic components. This review primarily focused on elemental abundance patterns of the thick disk…
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…
A strictly empirical review is given of presently available data on the evolution of galaxy morphology. From HST observations of distant galaxies and ground-based observations of nearby ones observed at the same rest-frame wavelength it is…
According to the current understanding of cosmic structure formation, the precursors of the most massive structures in the Universe began to form shortly after the Big Bang, in regions corresponding to the largest fluctuations in the cosmic…
We review the most recent observational results on the formation and evolution of early-type galaxies and their mass assembly by focusing on: the existence, properties and role of distant old, massive, passive systems to z~2, the stellar…
The current understanding of galaxy formation is that it proceeds in a 'bottom up' way, with the formation of small clumps of gas and stars that merge hierarchically until giant galaxies are built up. The baryonic gas loses the thermal…
I review a technique for interpreting faint galaxy data which traces the evolution with cosmic time of the galaxy luminosity density, as determined from several deep spectroscopic samples and the HDF. The method relies on the rest frame UV…
Understanding the origins and distribution of matter in the Universe is one of the most important quests in physics and astronomy. Themes range from astro-particle physics to chemical evolution in the Galaxy to cosmic nucleosynthesis and…
We discuss the use of galaxies to trace the large-scale structure of the universe and thereby to make cosmological inferences. We put special emphasis on our lack of knowledge about the relative distribution of galaxies and the dynamically…
How did galaxies form and evolve? This is one of the most challenging questions in astronomy today. Answering it requires a careful combination of observational and theoretical work to reliably determine the observed properties of cosmic…
It is currently believed that galaxies were assembled via chaotic hierarchical mergers between massive cold dark matter halos, in which baryonic star forming matter was embedded. One would therefore expect the properties of individual…