Matching the local and cosmic star formation histories

Abstract

Given the many recent advances in our understanding of the star formation history (SFH) of the Local Group and other nearby galaxies, and in the evolution of star formation with redshift, we present a new comparison of the comoving space density of the star formation rate as a function of look-back time for the Local and Distant Universe. We update the Local SFH derived from the analysis of resolved stellar populations (“fossil records”) in individual nearby galaxies, based on our own estimates as well as available in the literature. While the preliminary comparison of SFHs is found to be broadly consistent, the detailed discrepancies still remain, including excess of the Local SFR density in the most recent epoch.