Today's Colloquium: Understanding the evolving galaxies in the Local Universe

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.© Ivy Wong

The Local Universe provides an excellent high-resolution laboratory for studying the detailed processes of star formation and galaxy evolution. In this seminar, I will present some highlights from multiwavelength star formation studies of nearby HI-selected galaxies as well as our latest results on galaxies in transition. I will show that: (i) selecting galaxies via their HI content is a good way of selecting a large variety of star-forming galaxies regardless of size/stellar luminosity; (ii) the upper mass end of the stellar IMF may not be uniform; (iii) nearby post-starburst galaxies occupy the low-mass end of the green valley and represent a population of galaxies that are quickly going from the blue cloud to the red sequence; and (iv) unlike strong gravitational interactions, ram pressure does not strongly induce star formation. In addition, I will describe the current progress of the ASKAP project.