Resolving the Outer Disks and Halos of Nearby Galaxies
arXiv:0710.2133 · doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6933-8_26
Abstract
In a hierarchical merging scenario, the outer parts of a galaxy are a fossil record of the galaxy's early history. Observations of the outer disks and halos of galaxies thus provide a tool to study individual galaxy histories and test formation theories. Locally, an impressive effort has been made to understand the halo of the Milky Way, Andromeda, and M33. However, due to the stochastic nature of halo formation, a better understanding of this process requires a large sample of galaxies with known halo properties. The GHOSTS project (PI: R. de Jong) aims to characterize the halos and outer portions of 14 nearby (D=4-14 Mpc) spiral galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope. Detection of individual stars in the outer parts of these galaxies enables us to study both the morphological properties of the galaxies, and determine the stars' metallicity and age.
Contributed talk; to appear in the proceedings of "Galaxies in the Local Volume" Sydney 8-13 July 2007
References in corpus (5)
- Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos I: Methods
- The Secular Evolution of Disk Structural Parameters
- Evolution of asymptotic giant branch stars I. Updated synthetic TP-AGB models and their basic calibration
- A Study of Edge-On Galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys. II. Vertical distribution of the resolved stellar population
- A New Method for Isolating M31 Red Giant Stars: The Discovery of Stars out to a Radial Distance of 165 Kiloparsecs