Related papers: Comments on a faint old stellar system at 150 kpc
We re-analyse the recently published HARPS and PFS velocities of the nearby K dwarf GJ 221 that have been reported to contain the signatures of two planets orbiting the star. Our goal is to see whether the earlier studies discussing the…
We report the detection of a radial velocity companion to SDSS J091709.55+463821.8, the lowest mass white dwarf currently known with M~0.17Msun. The radial velocity of the white dwarf shows variations with a semi-amplitude of 148.8 km/s and…
We report the discovery of the most metal-poor dwarf star-forming galaxy (SFG) known to date, J0811+4730. This galaxy, at a redshift z=0.04444, has a Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) g-band absolute magnitude M_g = -15.41 mag. It was…
We present the radial velocity curve of a single-lined spectroscopic binary in the faint Hercules dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy, based on 34 individual spectra covering more than two years of observations. This is the first time that…
We present tentative evidence for the existence of a dissolved star cluster at [Fe/H]=-2.7 in the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We use the technique of chemical tagging to identify stars that are highly clustered in a multi-dimensional…
The dwarf galaxy companions to the Milky Way are unique cosmological laboratories. With luminosities as low as 10^-7 L_MW, they inhabit the lowest mass dark matter halos known to host stars and are presently the most direct tracers of the…
We present deep Hubble Space Telescope imaging of five faint dwarf galaxies associated with the nearby spiral NGC 253 (D$\approx$3.5 Mpc). Three of these are newly discovered ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, while all five were found in the…
We have used 605 days of photometric data from the Kepler spacecraft to study KIC 6614501, a close binary system with an orbital period of 0.15749747(25) days (3.779939 hours), that consists of a low-mass subdwarf B (sdB) star and a white…
It has been suggested that the internal dynamics of dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) can be used to test whether or not ultralight axions with $m_a\sim 10^{-22}\text{eV}$ are a preferred dark matter candidate. However, comparisons to…
We report on optical observations of the low-mass binary millisecond pulsar systems J0034-0534 and J2145-0750. A faint (I=23.5) object was found to be coincident with the timing position of PSR J2145-0750. While a galaxy or distant…
We review our current understanding of the internal dynamical properties of the dwarf spheroidal galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. These are the most dark matter dominated galaxies, and as such may be considered ideal laboratories to test…
The project Massive Unseen Companions to Hot Faint Underluminous Stars from SDSS (MUCHFUSS) aims at finding hot subdwarf stars with massive compact companions like massive white dwarfs (M > 1.0 Msun), neutron stars or stellar mass black…
Scaling relations are fundamental tools for exploring the morphological properties of galaxies and understanding their formation and evolution. Typically, galaxies follow a scaling relation between mass and size, measured by effective…
The structure and dark matter halo core properties of dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are investigated. A double-isothermal model of an isothermal stellar system, embedded in an isothermal dark halo core provides an excellent fit to the…
We report on 2MASS J01542930+0053266, a faint eclipsing system composed of two M dwarfs. The variability of this system was originally discovered during a pilot study of the 2MASS Calibration Point Source Working Database. Additional…
In the past, SDSS J160429.12+100002.2 was spectroscopically classified as a blue horizontal branch (BHB) star. Assuming a luminosity that is characteristic of BHB stars, the object's radial velocity and proper motions from Gaia Early Data…
The MATLAS deep imaging survey has uncovered a plethora of dwarf galaxies in the low density environment it has mapped. A fraction of them are unusually extended and have a low-surface brightness. Among these so-called ultra-diffuse…
We present a homogeneous kinematic analysis of red giant branch stars within 18 of the 28 Andromeda dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies, obtained using the Keck I LRIS and Keck II DEIMOS spectrographs. Based on their g-i colors (taken with the…
Among the 28,000 targeted stars in K2 Field 10 is the white dwarf WD 1202-024 (EPIC 201283111), first noted in the SDSS survey (SDSS 120515.80-024222.7). We have found that this hot white dwarf (Teff = 22,640 K) is in a very close orbit (P…
The white dwarf SDSS J124043.01+671034.68 (SDSS J1240+6710) was previously found to have an oxygen-dominated atmosphere with significant traces of neon, magnesium, and silicon. A possible origin via a violent late thermal pulse or binary…