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.