📣 Help Shape the Future of UKRI's Gateway to Research (GtR)

We're improving UKRI's Gateway to Research and are seeking your input! If you would be interested in being interviewed about the improvements we're making and to have your say about how we can make GtR more user-friendly, impactful, and effective for the Research and Innovation community, please email gateway@ukri.org.

Galaxy formation and evolution

Lead Research Organisation: University of Cambridge
Department Name: Institute of Astronomy

Abstract

This programmatic five-year rolling grant application addresses one of the most important problems in extragalactic astronomy, the formation and evolution of galaxies, one of the ``big questions'' in the current PPARC Road Map, and is a defining objective of virtually every national decadal survey of astronomy. A full understanding of galaxy formation and evolution requires multiple lines of attack. Observations of the resolved stellar populations in the Milky Way and its Local Group companions provide a detailed fossil record of the dynamical assemblies of the galaxies, the formation of stars, and the buildup of heavy elements over a wide range of mass scales and initial conditions. At the other end of the scale, observations of distant galaxies spanning lookback times of up to 12 Gyr provide direct measurements of the evolution of galaxy populations and the buildup of stars and metals with cosmic time. Finally, measurements of the large-scale star formation and abundance properties of nearby galaxies form a vital astrophysical bridge between the studies of nearby resolved stellar populations and the distant high-redshift investigations, by allowing us to characterise the evolutionary properties of the Hubble sequence and the complex ``gastrophysical'' processes that regulate the accretion of gas and the formation of stars in galaxies. In this rolling grant application we propose a series of investigations that will advance our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution on all three fronts.

Publications

10 25 50
publication icon
Xue X (2008) The Milky Way's Circular Velocity Curve to 60 kpc and an Estimate of the Dark Matter Halo Mass from the Kinematics of ~2400 SDSS Blue Horizontal-Branch Stars in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Koposov S (2007) The Discovery of Two Extremely Low Luminosity Milky Way Globular Clusters in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Hainline L (2009) A MID-INFRARED IMAGING SURVEY OF SUBMILLIMETER-SELECTED GALAXIES WITH THE SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Chen H (2009) HIGH-REDSHIFT STARBURSTING DWARF GALAXIES REVEALED BY ?-RAY BURST AFTERGLOWS in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
O'Dowd M (2009) POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS IN GALAXIES AT z ~ 0.1: THE EFFECT OF STAR FORMATION AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Zirm A (2008) The Nascent Red Sequence at \documentclass{aastex} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{bm} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{pifont} \usepackage{stmaryrd} \usepackage{textcomp} \usepackage{portland,xspace} \usepackage{amsmath,amsxtra} \usepackage[OT2,OT1]{fontenc} \newcommand\cyr{ \renewcommand\rmdefault{wncyr} \renewcommand\sfdefault{wncyss} \renewcommand\encodingdefault{OT2} \norma in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Lehmer B (2009) THE CHANDRA DEEP PROTOCLUSTER SURVEY: EVIDENCE FOR AN ENHANCEMENT OF AGN ACTIVITY IN THE SSA22 PROTOCLUSTER AT z = 3.09 in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Menéndez-Delmestre K (2009) MID-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY OF SUBMILLIMETER GALAXIES: EXTENDED STAR FORMATION IN MASSIVE HIGH-REDSHIFT GALAXIES in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
Mateo M (2008) The Velocity Dispersion Profile of the Remote Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Leo I: A Tidal Hit and Run? in The Astrophysical Journal

publication icon
De Jong R (2007) Stellar Populations across the NGC 4244 Truncated Galactic Disk in The Astrophysical Journal