The study of the star formation rate (SFR) is crucial for understanding the birth and evolution of the galaxies (Kennicutt 1998), with this aim in mind, we make use of a well-characterized sample of 380 nearby galaxies from the CALIFA survey that fill the entire color-magnitude diagram in the Local Universe. The availability of wide-field CALIFA IFS ensures a proper determination of the underlying stellar continuum and, consequently, of the extiction-corrected Hα luminosity. We compare our integrated Hα-based SFRs with single and hybrids tracers at other wavelengths found in the literature (Calzetti 2013). Then, we provide a new set of single-band and hybrid calibrators anchored to the extinction-corrected Hα luminosities. In the case of the hybrid calibrators we determine the best fitting aIR coefficients for different combinations of observed (UV or Hα) and dust-reprocessed (22μm or TIR) SFR contributions (where SFR ∝ Lobs + aIR × L[IR]). This analysis allow us to provide, for the first time, a set of hybrid calibrations for different morphological types and masses. These are particularly useful in case that the sample to be analyzed shows a different bias in terms of morphology or, more commonly, luminosity or stellar mass. We also study the dependence of this coefficient with color and ionized-gas attenuation. The distributions of aIR values are quite wide in all cases. We found that not single physical property can by itself explain the variation found in aIR.

Finally, we explore the spatial distribution of the SFR by measuring the contribution of disks to the total SFR in the Local Universe. Our preliminary spatially-resolved analysis shows that the disk to total (disk + spheroidal component) SFR ratio is on average ∼ 88%. The use of the 2D spectroscopic data is critical to properly determine the Hα luminosity function and SFR density in the Local Universe per galaxy components, the ultimate goal of this project.

We suggest a new photometric method to estimate thicknesses of galactic disks which is working for the galaxies seen under arbitrary inclination. We have applied our method to 45 galaxies from the open SDSS archive and to 57 galaxies from the Spitzer Survey S4G).

We examine the evolution induced by secular processes of an initial, cosmologically motivated, radial chemical distribution, in a barred and an unbarred disk.

We comment on the observed connection between the shape of the photometric profiles and the stellar population content in early-type galaxies.

We present a dust radiative transfer analysis of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5908. In our previous analysis, it was found that the standard assumption of a double-exponential dust distribution resulted in a poor fit. We investigate the possibility of the dust being distributed in one or more rings. The parameters are constrained using FitSKIRT, a code used to automatically determine the best fitting radiative transfer model given a set of observations. We discuss the possible implications of this dust distribution on the predicted spectral energy distribution.

We present a new technique developed to model the radiative transfer (RT) effects in nearby face-on galaxies. The face-on perspective provides insight into the star-forming regions and clumpy structure, imposing the need for high-resolution 3D models to recover the asymmetric stellar and dust geometries observed in galaxies. RT modeling of the continuum emission of stars and its interaction with the embedding dust in a galaxy's interstellar medium enables a self-consistent study of the main dust heating mechanisms in galaxies. The main advantage of RT calculations is the non-local character of dust heating that can be addressed by tracing the propagation of stellar radiation through the dusty galaxy medium.

We demonstrate a method to measure both rotation curves and 3D ISM structure in edge-on galaxies. Two-dimensional spectral coverage of edge-on galaxies reveals substantial deviations in emission line shapes from a purely gaussian profile that vary with radius and height. Non-gaussianity is quantified using statistical moments to third order. We infer the 3D density distribution by comparing the measured line profiles to synthetic line-of-sight velocity distributions from a suite of three-dimensional galaxy models with different 3D distributions of dust and gas and different rotation curve shapes and amplitudes. We apply this method using multi-position longslit data of nearby edge-on galaxy ESO 435-G25 and find our derived rotation curve matches measured HI rotation from envelope fitting but requires a flared dust disk to accurately describe the radial and vertical trends in the measured statistical moments. Our results are consistent with dynamical expectations for constant pressure support in a disk with exponentially declining surface-density.

Galactic winds and outflows are an ubiquitous phenomenon in galaxies with active star formation and/or active nuclei. They constitute the main mechanism for redistributing dust and metals on large scales and are therefore a key ingredient to understand the life cycle of galaxies. Among galaxies, ULIRGs are of particular interest in this context, as they host intense starbursts and are likely to be the dominant star formers at z > 1. These objects have been shown to host important winds, but it is not yet known what is the frequency of galactic winds and their properties in galaxies with lower star formation rates (SFR). We are studying galactic winds in a sample of 21 galaxies with different SFRs (including ULIRGs) from observations with the INTEGRAL fiber spectrograph on the 4.2m WHT. In order to be able to address the complex multi–phase nature of the wind phenomenon, we have used the Na I D doublet absorption lines to trace cold gas, and a few emission lines (Hα, [N ii] and [S ii]) to trace the warmer ionized gas of the wind. The distribution and kinematics of both components in these objects is then analysed. Preliminary results show strong spatial correlation between regions with high non–circular velocities, areas with high star formation activity and regions with two different components in the emission lines. This set of data will help us to characterise the distribution and kinematics of the winds and their relation with the host galaxy type.

We present the Luminosity Function (LF) and Colour-Magnitude Relation (CMR) using ∼45000 galaxies drawn from the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS). Using different selection criteria, we define several samples of early-type galaxies and explore their impact on the evolution of the red-sequence (RS) and the effects of dust. Our results suggest a rapid build-up of the RS within a short time scale. We find a rise in the number density of early-type galaxies and a strong evolution in LF and CMR. Massive galaxies exist already 9 Gyr ago and experience an efficient quenching of their star formation at z = 1, followed by a passive evolution with only limited merging activity. In contrast, low-mass galaxies indicate a different mass assembly history and cause a slow build-up of the CMR over cosmic time.

We present 3D observations of three interacting galaxies in order derive their extended kinematics and to trace events such as violent star-formation (SF), mass-transfer, structure perturbation and the presence of energetic sources induced by the interacting processes.

We present a new method of analyzing galaxy alignments in clusters originaly proposed by Godowski 2012 and now improved.

The luminosity function is an important quantity for analysis of large scale structure statistics, interpretation of galaxy counts (Lin & Kirshner 1996). We investigate the luminosity function of galaxy clusters. This is performed by counting the brightness of galaxies belonging to clusters in PF Catalogue. The obtained luminosity function is significantly different than that obtained both for optical and radiogalaxies (Machalski & Godowski 2000). The implications of this result for theories of galaxy formation are discussed as well.

The radio and optical characteristics of faint radio sources are investigated thanks to the VIPERS spectroscopic and photometric data, and radio data from the VLA FIRST survey at 1.4 GHz.

We use a sample of 36 galaxies to study empirical relations between Herschel infrared (IR) luminosities and the total mass of the interstellar gas (H2 + HI). Such a comparison provides a simple empirical relationship without introducing the uncertainty of dust model fitting. We find tight correlations, and provide fits to these relations, between Herschel luminosities and the total gas mass integrated over entire galaxies, with the tightest, almost linear, correlation found for the longest wavelength data (SPIRE500). However, we find that accounting for the gas-phase metallicity (affecting the dust-to-gas ratio) is crucial when applying these relations to low-mass, and presumably high-redshift, galaxies. When examining these relations as a function of galactocentric radius, we find the same correlations, albeit with a larger scatter, up to radius of r ∼ 0.7r25 (containing most of a galaxy's baryonic mass). The tight relations found for the bulk of the galaxy's baryonic content suggest that total gas masses of disk-like (non-merging/ULIRG) galaxies can be inferred from far-infrared continuum measurements in situations where only the latter are available. This work is to appear in Groves et al. (2014).

We investigate the physical properties of the interstellar gas in the nearby edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891, using Herschel PACS/SPIRE observations of the most important far-infrared (FIR) cooling lines – [Cii] 158 μm, [Nii] 122, 205 μm, [Oi] 63, 145 μm, and [Oiii] 88 μm – obtained as part of the Very Nearby Galaxy Survey (P. I.: C. D. Wilson). We compare our observations to the predictions of a photo dissociation region (PDR) model to determine the gas density, n, and the strength of the incident FUV radiation field, G0, on a pixel-by-pixel basis. The majority of PDRs in NGC 891's disc exhibit properties similar to the physical conditions found in the spiral arm and inter-arm regions of the face-on M51 galaxy. We estimate a stronger FUV field in the far north-eastern side than compared to the rest of the disc.

We introduce a pilot project to measure metallicitiy gradients for a sample of twenty nearby galaxies drawn from the Herschel Reference Survey (HRS), representative of normal, star-forming spiral galaxies. We have obtained optical spectroscopic observations using the Very Large Telescope with the FORS2 instrument in multi-object mode, targeting individual Hii and star-forming regions across the galaxy discs (P. I.: L. Cortese). From the ratios of the strong emission lines, we estimate the local gas-phase oxygen abundance and construct metallicity gradients. Combining these new data with Herschel PACS/SPIRE far-infrared photometric observations and Hi 21 cm line maps, to trace the cold dust and gas respectively, will allow the study of the relationships between stars, gas, dust and metals on sub-kiloparsec scales.

The [CII] 158 μm line is typically the brightest far-IR emission line from star-forming galaxies. As such, this line is a possible tracer of star-formation, but to do so we need the relative contributions of different ISM phases. Using high physical resolution observations of the [CII] 158 μm line from Herschel PACS in five 3'×3' field in M 31 and optical IFU spectra from PPaK and ancillary IR data, we are able to spatially separate out the ISM phases Kapala. We find that a large fraction of [CII] emission in M 31 arises from diffuse gas (~20–90), with a sub-linear relation of [CII]–SFR at ~50 pc scales. However, on ~kpc scales, the observed empirical [CII]–SFR relation is in agreement with other extragalactic studies.

Galaxy outflows are a vital mechanism in the regulation of galaxy evolution through feedback and enrichment. NGC 2146, a nearby infrared luminous galaxy (LIRG), presents evidence for outflows along the disk minor axis in all gas phases (ionized, neutral atomic and molecular). We present new far-IR Herschel imaging and spectroscopy of this galaxy from the Key Insights on Nearby Galaxies: a Far-Infrared Survey with Herschel (KINGFISH) project, as well as new optical integral field unit spectroscopy, to map the kinematics and gas excitation in the central 5 kpc and trace the dust distribution (Kreckel et al.2014). We observe an increased velocity dispersion in the [OI] 62 um, [OIII] 88 um, [NII] 122 um and [CII] 158 um fine-structure lines that is spatially coincident with shocked gas above and below the disk.

With integral field spectroscopic data from the the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral-field spectrograph (SAMI) survey and the VLA, we will study the relationship between star formation (as traced by Hα emission) and the radio continuum emission within galaxies with the aim of better understanding the intricacies of local scaling relations.

Multiwavelength Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) of far-infrared (FIR) galaxies detected in the AKARI South Ecliptic Poles Survey (ADF-S) allow to trace differences between [Ultra]-Luminous Infrared Galaxies ([U]LIRGS) and other types of star-forming galaxies (SF).