The Star Formation History in Nearby Dwarf Galaxies: the Fossil Record in the Color-Magnitude Diagram

Abstract

Dwarf galaxies may play a key role in the formation and evolution of bigger systems. This make a topic of major interest knowing how they form and evolve and, in particular, how their star formation histories (SFHs) have proceed since their birth. For nearby galaxies, the color-magnitude diagram (CMD) contains stars formed over all their lifetime. It is hence a fossil record of their SFHs. The analysis with synthetic CMDs provides a powerful tool to retrieve them. In this paper, I discuss the critical issues related to the computation of synthetic CMDs, present a short summary of the currently available results for the SFH extending the full life of galaxies and make a few critical considerations about the powerfulness and back-draws of the method.