Resolved Stellar Populations as Tracers of Outskirts

TL;DR

This paper discusses how studying resolved stellar populations in galaxy outskirts can reveal insights into galaxy formation, evolution, and the validity of cosmological models, especially beyond the Local Group.

Contribution

It emphasizes the importance of resolving individual stars in galaxy haloes to test and refine theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution.

Findings

Resolved stellar populations provide age and metallicity estimates.

Wide-field surveys have uncovered tidal streams and faint satellites.

Studying galaxy outskirts informs models of hierarchical galaxy formation.

Abstract

Galaxy haloes contain fundamental clues about the galaxy formation and evolution process: hierarchical cosmological models predict haloes to be ubiquitous, and to be (at least in part) the product of past merger and/or accretion events. The advent of wide-field surveys in the last two decades has revolutionized our view of our own Galaxy and its closest "sister", Andromeda, revealing copious tidal streams from past and ongoing accretion episodes, as well as doubling the number of their known faint satellites. The focus shall now be shifted to galaxy haloes beyond the Local Group: resolving individual stars over significant areas of galaxy haloes will enable estimates of their ages, metallicities and gradients. The valuable information collected for galaxies with a range of masses, morphologies and within diverse environments will ultimately test and quantitatively inform theoretical models of galaxy formation, and shed light onto the many challenges faced by simulations on galactic scales.