Apr 26, 2012
Daniel Weisz, University of Washington
"Nearby Galaxies as Seen with HST"
The high spatial resolution imaging capabilities of HST have allowed us to construct deep resolved star color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for over 100 nearby galaxies. By analyzing each galaxy's CMD, we can measure its star formation history (SFH), providing a detailed view of its formation and evolution across cosmic time. In this talk, I will synthesize new results obtained from the measuring the SFHs for several dozen diverse nearby galaxies, ranging from extremely low mass `ultra-faint' dwarfs to our more massive neighbor, M31. I will include recent findings from the ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury (ANGST), a systematic survey of 70 nearby low mass galaxies, and the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT), an ongoing HST multi-cycle program that will provide UV through near-IR imaging of ~ 150 million resolved stellar stars from ~ 1/4 of M31's star-forming disk.