The Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies Around the Milky Way

Tolstoy, E.; Battaglia, G.; Helmi, A.; Irwin, M. J.; Hill, V.
Bibliographical reference

From Stars to Galaxies: Building the Pieces to Build Up the Universe. ASP Conference Series, Vol. 374, proceedings of the conference held 16-20 October 2006 at Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Venice, Italy. Edited by Antonella Vallenari, Rosaria Tantalo, Laura Portinari, and Alessia Moretti., p.215

Advertised on:
12
2007
Number of authors
5
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
We review the progress of ESO/WFI Imaging and VLT/FLAMES spectroscopy of large numbers of individual stars in nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies by the Dwarf Abundances and Radial-velocities Team (DART). These observations have allowed us to show that neither the kinematics nor the abundance nor the spatial distributions are easy to explain in a straight forward manner for these smallest galaxies. The main result is that dwarf galaxies show complex and highly specific evolutionary and metal enrichment processes, especially at ancient times. This conclusively proves that these small galaxies are not the surviving equivalent of the building blocks of the larger galaxies in the Local Group.