ASTRONOMY COLLOQUIUM - APRIL 18, 2006

Mauro Giavalisco, Space Telescope Science Institute

Star Formation at High Redshift

Recently, galaxies at high redshifts have been the targets of extensive, coordinated programs of observations from NASA's Great Observatories, as well as from the major ground--based telescopes.

The sensitivity and angular resolution of Hubble and the wavelength coverage of Spitzer are allowing us, for the first time, to compare properties of galaxies observed as far back in the past as ~93% of the age of the universe with those of systems observed at much later times in the cosmic evolution. I will show results from these studies that are relevant to understand key features of galaxy evolution and to test some of our general ideas on how galaxies form and evolve. I will focus, in particular, on the morphology and spatial clustering of galaxies at redshifts z>2 and discuss their implications about the physics of star formation in these systems.