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3. FUTURE PROSPECTS

The two distributions outlined above, both suggest that the well known bulge and disk components of galaxies follow distinct trends in both the surface brightness (size) distribution and colour distribution. This is of course not particularly new, however what is exciting is our ability to quantify these distributions and trends in detail for large statistical samples, and to extend this kind of structural analysis to higher redshift. In particular the data resolution and signal-to-noise of the ground-based data discussed above is comparable to that available with the Hubble Space Telescope (Driver et al. 1995a, Driver et al. 1995b, Driver et al. 1998b, Driver 1999) and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. There is nothing, other than hard diligent work, to prevent us from quantifying the evolution of these distributions across the entire path length of the universe. However three further issues are worth raising:

  1. Which wavelength is optimal for structural studies of galaxies ?
  2. How might we push back the boundaries into the dwarf regime ?
  3. Can we connect structural measurements to the properties of the dark matter halo ?