Quantifying Morphological Evolution from Low to High Redshifts

Establishing the morphological history of ordinary galaxies was one of the original goals for the Hubble Space Telescope, and remarkable progress toward achieving this this goal has been made. How much of this progress has been at the expense of the Hubble sequence? As we probe further out in redshift space, it seems time to re-examine the underlying significance of Hubble's tuning fork in light of the the spectacular and often bizarre morphological characteristics of high redshift galaxies. The aim of this review is to build a morphological bridge between high-redshift and low-redshift galaxy populations, by using quantitative morphological measures to determine the maximum redshift for which the Hubble sequence provides a meaningful description of the galaxy population. I will outline the various techniques used to quantify high-redshift galaxy morphology, highlight the aspects of the Hubble sequence being probed by these techniques, and indicate what is getting left behind. I will argue that at higher redshifts new techniques (and new ideas) that place less emphasis on classical morphology and more emphasis on the link between morphology and resolved stellar populations are needed in order to probe the evolutionary history of high-redshift galaxies

Shedding Light on the Galaxy Luminosity Function

From as early as the 1930s, astronomers have tried to quantify the statistical nature of the evolution and large-scale structure of galaxies by studying their luminosity distribution as a function of redshift - known as the galaxy luminosity function (LF). Accurately constructing the LF remains a popular and yet tricky pursuit in modern observational cosmology where the presence of observational selection effects due to e.g. detection thresholds in apparent magnitude, colour, surface brightness or some combination thereof can render any given galaxy survey incomplete and thus introduce bias into the LF. Over the last seventy years there have been numerous sophisticated statistical approaches devised to tackle these issues; all have advantages -- but not one is perfect. This review takes a broad historical look at the key statistical tools that have been developed over this period, discussing their relative merits and highlighting any significant extensions and modifications. In addition, the more generalised methods that have emerged within the last few years are examined. These methods propose a more rigorous statistical framework within which to determine the LF compared to some of the more traditional methods. I also look at how photometric redshift estimations are being incorporated into the LF methodology as well as considering the construction of bivariate LFs. Finally, I review the ongoing development of completeness estimators which test some of the fundamental assumptions going into LF estimators and can be powerful probes of any residual systematic effects inherent magnitude-redshift data.Comment: 95 pages, 23 figures, 3 tables. Now published in The Astronomy & Astrophysics Review. This version: bring in line with A&AR format requirements, also minor typo corrections made, additional citations and higher rez images adde

ESICM LIVES 2016: part two : Milan, Italy. 1-5 October 2016.

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