We present a comparison between the observed color distribution, number and mass density of massive galaxies at 1.5 < z < 3 and a model by Hopkins et al. that relates the quasar and galaxy population on the basis of gas-rich mergers. In order to test the hypothesis that quiescent red galaxies are formed after a gas-richmerger involving quasar activity, we confront photometry of massive (M > 4×1...

We present H-band (1.65μm) surface photometry of 57 galaxies drawn from the Local Sphere of Influence (LSI) with distances of less than 10 Mpc from the Milky Way. The images with a typical surface brightness limit 4 mag fainter than 2MASS (24.5 mag arcsec−2 < μlim < 26 mag arcsec−2 ) have been obtained with IRIS2 on the 3.9 m Anglo-Australian Telescope. A total of 22 galaxies that remained prev...

Dwarf, irregular and infrared-luminous starburst galaxies are all known to have “steep” luminosity functions with faint-end behavior roughly φ(L) ∝ L−1.8. This form is exactly what is expected if the luminosities of these objects fade with time as L ∝ t−1.3, because the objects spend more time at low luminosities than high, even if they form with a wide range of initial masses. Models of young ...

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 to the combination of wide-area star counts, deep HST imagery and 8-m class spectroscopy. I review here several recent results concerning substructure, star c...

We develop a dust efflux model of radiation pressure acting on dust grains which successfully reproduces the relation between stellar mass, dust opacity and SFR observed in local star-forming galaxies. The dust content of local star-forming galaxies is set by the competition between the physical processes of dust production and dust loss in our model. The dust loss rate is proportional to the d...

We investigate the stellar populations in the star forming ring of the luminous infrared galaxy NGC 7469. We use Hubble Space Telescope multi-wavelength (UV through NIR) imaging complemented with new K-band ground-based long-slit spectroscopy, and mid-IR and radio maps from the literature. Spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and evolutionary synthesis models have been used to characterize the ...

We present a demographic analysis of integrated star formation and gas properties for a sample of galaxies representative of the overall population at z ∼ 0. This research was undertaken in order to characterise the nature of star formation and interstellar medium (ISM) behaviour in the local universe, and test the extent to which global star formation rates can be seen as dependent on the inte...

One of the central features of the last 8 to 10 billion years of cosmic history has been the emergence of a wellpopulated red sequence of non-star-forming galaxies. A number of models of galaxy formation and evolution have been devised to attempt to explain this behavior. Most current models require feedback from supermassive black holes (AGN feedback) to quench star formation in galaxies in th...

The Center for Adaptive Optics Treasury Survey (CATS) aims to combine deep HST images in the optical with deep Keck adaptive optics (AO) data in the near-infrared (NIR) to study distant galaxies, AGN, and supernovae. We recently achieved an important new milestone by securing the first Keck laser guide star AO image of faint galaxies. Six galaxies with redshifts ranging from 0.3-1.0 were target...

We examine the origins of the bimodality observed in the global properties of galaxies around a stellar mass of 3×10M⊙ by comparing the environmental dependencies of star-formation for the giant and dwarf galaxy populations. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR4 spectroscopic dataset is used to produce a sample of galaxies in the vicinity of the supercluster centered on the cluster A2199 at z = 0.03...