The Star Formation History of Ellipticals from the Fossil Evidence

I present a biased review of when the epoch of formation of galaxies (both disks and ellipticals) maybe took place. I base my arguments in simple (mostly) analytic models that have been recently developed to reproduce most of the observed photometric, chemical and dynamical properties of galaxies both at low and high redshift.

The rest-frame UV contains the most sensitive indicators of age for elliptical galaxies. While the near-UV flux from young ellipticals isolates the main sequence turnoff, the far-UV flux in old ellipticals is dominated by hot horizontal branch (HB) stars. This evolved population was first revealed by early UV observations showing a sharp flux increase shortward of rest-frame 2500 A, subsequently dubbed the "UV upturn." The phenomenon has since been characterized in many local...

Elliptical galaxies outside dense clusters are observed to contain small amounts (relative to spiral galaxies) of cold interstellar gas. This review discusses the atomic gas, the molecular gas, and the dust in elliptical galaxies. Field elliptical galaxies contain about 0.01 to 0.1 of the cold interstellar matter content of spiral galaxies of similar luminosity, and support a low level of star formation. The surface densities of cold gas clouds in the centers of some elliptic...

The tightness of the observed colour-magnitude and Mg$_{2}$- velocity dispersion relations for elliptical galaxies has often been cited as an argument against a picture in which ellipticals form by the merging of spiral disks. A common view is that merging would mix together stars of disparate ages and produce a large scatter in these relations. Here I use semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to derive the distribution of the mean ages, colours and metallicities of the st...

This paper examines star formation (SF) in relatively massive, primarily early-type galaxies (ETGs) at z~0.1. A sample is drawn from bulge-dominated GALEX/SDSS galaxies on the optical red sequence with strong UV excess and yet quiescent SDSS spectra. High-resolution far-UV imaging of 27 such ETGs using HST ACS/SBC reveals structured UV morphology in 93% of the sample, consistent with low-level ongoing SF (~0.5 Ms/yr). In 3/4 of the sample the SF is extended on galaxy scales (...

Beyond redshift ~1.4 the only spectral feature that allows one to get the redshift of passively evolving galaxies (PEG) with optical spectrographs is a characteristic structure due to a set of iron and magnesium lines lines at 2600-2850 Angstrom in the rest frame. The same feature permits also to estimate the time elapsed since the cessation of star formation. Current efforts at observing high redshift PEGs at the VLT and SUBARU telescopes are briefly reviewed.

What is the origin of the numerous population of diffuse elliptical galaxies (dE) in clusters? These galaxies formed their stars several billion years ago and lost their gas. Though the stellar winds resulting from star formation and the interactions with the environment undoubedtly play a role, their respective role and details of the mechanism of this evolution is still debated. In this presentation we will review the first 3D spectroscopic observations of a handful of dE...

We determine relative stellar ages and metallicities mainly for about 80 elliptical galaxies in low and high density environments via the latest binary stellar population (BSP) synthesis model and test a latest hierarchical formation model of elliptical galaxies which adopted the new $\Lambda$CDM cosmology for the first time. The stellar ages and metallicities of galaxies are estimated from two high-quality published spectra line indices, i.e. H$\beta$ and [MgFe]. The results...

I review the current status of an on-going investigation into the stellar and dynamical ages of the oldest known galaxies at redshifts greater than 1. The spectroscopic data, when compared with the predictions of a range of recent evolutionary synthesis models, continue to indicate that the oldest galaxies at z = 1.5 are already at least 3 Gyr old. Moreover, comparison with new models which incorporate chemical evolution, suggests that this result may be less sensitive to the...

We present improved constraints on the formation time scale of massive cluster galaxies based on rest-frame optical spectra of galaxies in a forming cluster located at z=2.16. The spectra are obtained with MOIRCS on the Subaru telescope with an integration time of ~7 hours. We achieve accurate redshift measurements by fitting SEDs using the spectra and broad-band photometry simultaneously, allowing us to identify probable cluster members. Clusters at low redshifts are dominat...