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

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Fellhauer M (2008) Modelling the dynamical evolution of the Bootes dwarf spheroidal galaxy in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Burningham B (2008) Exploring the substellar temperature regime down to ~550 K in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Shin E (2008) The effect of satellite galaxies on gravitational lensing flux ratios in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Dye S (2008) Models of the Cosmic Horseshoe gravitational lens J10044112 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Seabroke G (2008) Is the sky falling? Searching for stellar streams in the local Milky Way disc in the CORAVEL and RAVE surveys in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Coppin K (2008) The SCUBA HAlf Degree Extragalactic Survey - VI. 350-µm mapping of submillimetre galaxies in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Bramich D (2008) Light and motion in SDSS Stripe 82: the catalogues in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Ellison S (2008) A search for damped Lyman systems towards radio-loud quasars I: the optical survey in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Chapman S (2008) The kinematic footprints of five stellar streams in Andromeda's halo ? in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Hao C (2008) Growth of Black Holes and Their Host Spheroids in (Sub)mm-loud High-Redshift QSOs in Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Pettini M (2008) Deuterium abundance in the most metal-poor damped Lyman alpha system: converging on O b,0 h 2 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Maddox N (2008) Luminous K -band selected quasars from UKIDSS in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Adelman-McCarthy J (2008) The Sixth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series

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Letarte B (2009) A Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopic survey of the faint Mâ??31 satellites Andâ??XV and Andâ??XVI in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Sen B (2009) Streaming motion in Leo I in The Annals of Applied Statistics

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Huxor A (2009) THE DISCOVERY OF REMOTE GLOBULAR CLUSTERS IN M33 in The Astrophysical Journal

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Hainline K (2009) REST-FRAME OPTICAL SPECTRA OF THREE STRONGLY LENSED GALAXIES AT z ~ 2 in The Astrophysical Journal

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Donato F (2009) A constant dark matter halo surface density in galaxies in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Peñarrubia J (2009) THE SIGNATURE OF GALACTIC TIDES IN LOCAL GROUP DWARF SPHEROIDALS in The Astrophysical Journal

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Belokurov V (2009) The discovery of Segue 2: a prototype of the population of satellites of satellites in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Watkins L (2009) Substructure revealed by RR Lyraes in SDSS Stripe 82 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Pontzen A (2009) Dust biasing of damped Lyman alpha systems: a Bayesian analysis in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Quinn D (2009) A strip search for new very wide halo binaries A strip search for new very wide halo binaries in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Walker M (2009) A UNIVERSAL MASS PROFILE FOR DWARF SPHEROIDAL GALAXIES? in The Astrophysical Journal

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Richardson J (2009) An HST /ACS view of the inhomogeneous outer halo of M31 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Niederste-Ostholt M (2009) The origin of Segue 1 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Collins M (2009) A spectroscopic survey of EC4, an extended cluster in Andromeda's halo in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

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Walker M (2009) LEO V: SPECTROSCOPY OF A DISTANT AND DISTURBED SATELLITE in The Astrophysical Journal