II Most of the baryonic matter in our universe is not evenly spread out but collected in galaxies. These galaxies can in turn be collected into large clusters of galaxies.
Galaxies exist in many different forms, with vastly different properties.
One of the main astrophysical goals is to understand how galaxies form, how they acquire their different shapes and why different types of galaxies have different star formation histories. In order to gain an understanding of these problems we have to use almost all aspects of astrophysics, from stellar physics to cosmology. In this course the student will gain both a broad and deep understanding of the galaxies that populate our universe and an overview of how their properties evolve with time and how we can address these questions. The content of this course covers a detailed description of different types of galaxies, their morphological structure, stellar content, interstellar medium and their star formation activity. In particular we will study spiral density wave mechanisms, barred galaxies as well as gravitational interaction between nearby galaxies.