Contents

• Prologue
  • Before the beginning
  • My source of knowledge
  
  
• Introduction
  • Historical perspective
  • Bringing order to the zoo of galaxies
    • Vocabulary
    • Galaxy properties
  • Summary
  
  
• The discovery of the Milky Way and of other galaxies
  • The main observables
  • The main players, their measurements, and their mistakes
    • Time-line
  • Absorption, scattering and reddening
  • Summary
  
  
• The modern view of the Milky Way
  • New technology
    • Radio-astronomy
    • Infrared observations
    • Star-counts, again
  • The components of the Milky Way
    • The disk
    • The thick disk
    • The bulge
    • The stellar halo
    • The dark matter halo
  • Metallicity of stars
    • Galactic Coordinates
  • Summary
  
  
• The Interstellar Medium
  • Interstellar dust
  • Interstellar gas
    • Collisional processes
    • Photo-ionisation
    • 21-cm radiation
    • Other radio-wavelengths
    • The Jeans mass
  • Interactions between stars and the ISM
  • Summary
  
  
• Dynamics of galactic disks
  • Differential rotation
    • Keplerian rotation
    • Oort's constants
    • Rotation curves measured from HI 21-cm emission
  • Rotation curves and dark matter
  • The Oort limit
  • Spiral arms
  • Summary
  
  
• Elliptical galaxies. I
  • Luminosity profile
  • Stellar populations and ISM
  • X-rays
    • Thermal bremsstrahlung
    • Spectrum
    • Hydrostatic equilibrium
    • Dark matter
  • Summary
  
  
• The Dark Halo
  • High velocity stars
    • Point mass model
    • Parameters of dark halo
  • The Local Group
    • Galaxy population
    • Local Group timing argument
  • Summary
  
  
• Elliptical galaxies. II
  • Relaxation in stellar systems
  • Jeans equations
    • A continuity equation
    • Boltzmann's equation
    • Moments of the Boltzmann equation
  • Summary
  
  
• Groups and clusters of galaxies
  • Introduction
    • Evidence for dark matter from galaxy motions
  • Evidence for dark matter from X-rays observations
  • Metallicity of the Intra-cluster medium.
  • The dark matter density of the Universe
  • Summary
  
  
• Galaxy statistics
  • The density-morphology relation
  • Galaxy scaling relations
    • The Tully-Fisher relation in spirals
    • The Faber-Jackson relation in ellipticals
  • Tully-Fisher and Fundamental plane relations as standard candles
  • Galaxy luminosity function
  • Summary
  
  
• Active Galactic Nuclei
  • Observational properties
  • The central engine, and unified schemes
  • Evidence for a SMBH
    • Photometry
    • Stellar kinematics
    • Stellar kinematics in the MW centre
    • Methods based on gas kinematics
    • Profile of X-ray lines
  • Discussion
  • Summary
  
  
• Gravitational lensing
  • The lens equation
    • Bending of light
    • Point-like lens and source
    • More realistic lensing
  • Micro-lensing
  • Strong lensing
  • Weak lensing
  • Summary
  
  
• About this document ...