Abstract
This paper reviews some of the outstanding questions concerning compact groups of galaxies. These relate to the physical nature and dynamical status of the groups, their formation and evolution, and their role in galaxy evolution. The picture that emerges is that compact groups are generally physically dense systems, although often contaminated by optical projections. Their evolution is likely a continuous process of infall, interaction and merging. As new galaxies are added, and previous ones merge, the membership of the group evolves. I suggest that while the size of the group changes little, other physical properties such as total mass, gas mass, velocity dispersion, fraction of early-type galaxies increase with time. This picture is at least qualitatively consistent with observations and provides a natural explanation for the strongest correlations found in compact group samples.
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