Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nearby Galaxies: Modelling Star Formation Histories And Contamination By Unresolved Background Galaxies, Hadi Papei

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Galaxies are complex systems of stars, gas, dust, and dark matter which evolve over billions of years, and one of the main goals of astrophysics is to understand how these complex systems form and change. Measuring the star formation history of nearby galaxies, in which thousands of stars can be resolved individually, has provided us with a clear picture of their evolutionary history and the evolution of galaxies in general.

In this work, we have developed the first public Python package, SFHPy, to measure star formation histories of nearby galaxies using their colour-magnitude diagrams. In this algorithm, an observed colour-magnitude …

Star Cluster Populations In Compact Groups Of Galaxies, Konstantin Fedotov

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In this thesis, I have explored the star cluster populations of several compact groups of galaxies, based on observations with the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. Low velocity dispersions and high galaxy number densities, the conditions of compact groups (in particular Hickson Compact Groups), represent an environment with frequent and prolonged interactions. Such environment can trigger the formation of star cluster populations associated with specific events. The BVI study has shown that star clusters can be used as a powerful tool for studying such events triggered by mergers and …