John Salzer

SMURFS in Space: The Evolutionary Status of Blue Compact Dwarfs

Results of an ongoing multiwavelength program to study actively star-forming dwarf galaxies - BCDs - will be presented. We will try to answer fundamental questions regarding the evolutionary status of BCDs such as: what were the progenitors of current BCDs? What do BCDs evolve in to? How intense are the bursts of star-formation in the typical BCD? In what type of galaxian environments are BCDs found? Among the questions that the speaker would like to hear answers from the participants are: Do BCDs really lose all their gas due to SNe explosions? Do BCDs evolve into dwarf elliptical galaxies? Can BCDs and post-BCDs explain a significant fraction of the excess faint blue galaxies?