This timely book presents an overview of the galaxies within the Local Volume, including the Local Group and our closest neighbours, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. Presented here are the latest results from radio, infrared and optical surveys as well as detailed multi-wavelength studies of individual galaxies. The book aims to provide a vibrant forum for presentations and discussions across a broad range of astrophysical topics.

This volume contains the updated and expanded lecture notes of the 37th Saas-Fee Advanced Course organised by the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy. It offers the most comprehensive and up to date review of one of the hottest research topics in astrophysics - how our Milky Way galaxy formed. Joss Bland-Hawthorn & Ken Freeman lectured on Near Field Cosmology - The Origin of the Galaxy and the Local Group. Francesca Matteucci’s chapter is on Chemical evolution of the Milky Way and its Satellites. As designed by the SSAA, books in this series – and this one too – are targeted at graduate and PhD students and young researchers in astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. Lecturers and researchers entering the field will also benefit from the book.

This is volume 5 of Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems, a six-volume compendium of modern astronomical research, covering subjects of key interest to the main fields of contemporary astronomy. This volume on “Galactic Structure and Stellar Populations”, edited by Gerard F. Gilmore, presents accessible review chapters on Stellar Populations, Chemical Abundances as Population Tracers, Metal-Poor Stars and the Chemical Enrichment of the Universe, The Stellar and Sub-Stellar Initial Mass Function of Simple and Composite Populations, The Galactic Nucleus, The Galactic Bulge, Open Clusters and Their Role in the Galaxy, Star Counts and the Nature of Galactic Thick Disk, The Infrared Galaxy, Interstellar PAHs and Dust, Galactic Neutral Hydrogen, High-Velocity Clouds, Magnetic Fields in Galaxies, Astrophysics of Galactic Charged Cosmic Rays, Gamma-Ray Emission of Supernova Remnants and the Origin of Galactic Cosmic Rays, Galactic Distance Scales, Globular Cluster Dynamical Evolution, Dynamics of Disks and Warps, Mass Distribution and Rotation Curve in the Galaxy, Dark Matter in the Galactic Dwarf Spheroidal Satellites, and History of Dark Matter in Galaxies. All chapters of the handbook were written by practicing professionals. They include sufficient background material and references to the current literature to allow readers to learn enough about a specialty within astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology to get started on their own practical research projects. In the spirit of the series Stars and Stellar Systems published by Chicago University Press in the 1960s and 1970s, each chapter of Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems can stand on its own as a fundamental review of its respective sub-discipline, and each volume can be used as a textbook or recommended reference work for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate courses. Advanced students and professional astronomers in their roles as both lecturers and researchers will welcome Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems as a comprehensive and pedagogical reference work on astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology.

The Local Group is a small cluster of galaxies that includes the Milky Way. At least half of all galaxies in the Universe are thought to belong to similar groups. This authoritative volume provides a comprehensive synthesis of what is known about the Local Group. It begins with a summary of each member galaxy, as well as those galaxies previously regarded as possible members. The book examines the mass, stability and evolution of the Local Group as a whole and includes many important previously unpublished results and conclusions. With clarity, Professor van den Bergh provides a masterful summary of all that is known about the galaxies of the Local Group and their evolution, and expertly places this knowledge in the wider context of on-going studies of galaxy formation and evolution, the cosmic distance scale, and the conditions in the early Universe.

A review of the current observational knowledge and understanding of the cosmic X-ray background.

The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is the deepest optical image of the Universe ever obtained. It is the result of a 150-orbit observing programme with the Hubble Space Telescope. It provides a unique resource for researchers studying the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies. This timely volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the HDF and its scientific impact on our understanding in cosmology. It presents articles by a host of world experts who gathered together at an international conference at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The contributions combine observations of the HDF at a variety of wavelengths with the latest theoretical progress in our understanding of the cosmic history of star and galaxy formation. The HDF is set to revolutionize our understanding in cosmology. This book therefore provides an indispensable reference for all graduate students and researchers in observational or theoretical cosmology.

Since the 1980s the cross-disciplinary, multidimensional field of links between cosmology and particle physics has been widely recognised by theorists, studying cosmology, particle and nuclear physics, gravity, as well as by astrophysicists, astronomers, space physicists, experimental particle and nuclear physicists, mathematicians and engineers.The relationship between cosmology and particle physics is now one of the important topics of discussion at any scientific meeting both on astrophysics and high energy physics.Cosmoparticle physics is the result of the mutual relationship between cosmology and particle physics in their search for physical mechanisms of inflation, baryosynthesis, nonbaryonic dark matter, and for fundamental unity of the natural forces underlying them. The set of nontrivial links between cosmological consequences of particle models and the astrophysical data on matter and radiation in the modern universe maintains cosmoarcheology, testing self-consistently particular predictions of particle models on the base of cosmological scenarios, following from them. Complex analysis of all the indirect cosmological, astrophysical and microphysical phenomena makes cosmoparticle physics the science of the world and renders quantitatively definite the correspondence between its micro- and macroscopic structure.This book outlines the principal ideas of the modern particle theory and cosmology, their mutual relationship and the nontrivial correspondence of their physical and astrophysical effects.