Related papers: Mapping the Asymmetric Thick Disk: The Hercules Th…

We explore the stellar structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) disk using data from the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH) and the Dark Energy Survey. We detect a ring-like stellar overdensity in the red clump star count…

We analyse the phase-space structure of simulated thick discs that are the result of a significant merger between a disc galaxy and a satellite. Our main goal is to establish what would be the characteristic imprints of a merger origin for…

Studies of elemental abundances in stars belonging to the thin and the thick disk of our Galaxy are reviewed. Edvardsson et al. (1993) found strong evidence of [alpha/Fe] variations among F and G main sequence stars with the same [Fe/H] and…

Thanks to modern sky surveys, over twenty stellar streams and overdensity structures have been discovered in the halo of the Milky Way. In this paper, we present an analysis of spectroscopic observations of individual stars from one such…

We present results of numerical N-body simulations of a galactic stellar disk embedded into a spherical dark halo. The non-linear dynamics of bending instabilities developing in the disk is studied. The bending modes, axisymmetric and not,…

This paper presents an investigation of the outer disk structure by using data from a recent release of the 2 micron sky survey (2MASS). This 2MASS data show unambiguously that the stellar disk thickens with increasing distance from the…

We map the stellar structure of the Galactic thick disk and halo by applying color-magnitude diagram (CMD) fitting to photometric data from the SEGUE survey, allowing, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of their structure at both…

Our Galaxy is thought to have undergone an active evolutionary history dominated by star formation, the accretion of cold gas, and, in particular, mergers up to 10 gigayear ago. The stellar halo reveals rich fossil evidence of these…

We study the distribution of nearby thick disc and halo stars in subspaces defined by their characteristic orbital parameters. Our aim is to establish the origin of the structure reported in particular, in the $R_{\rm max}-z_{\rm max}$…

We test competing models that aim at explaining the nature of stars in the Milky Way that are well away (|z|$\gtrsim$ 1kpc) from the midplane, the so-called thick disk: the stars may have gotten there through orbital migration, through…

We analyse a sample of over 1000 stars from 32 fields imaged in the V and I bands with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera, on board of the Hubble Space Telescope. The fields are located at Galactic latitudes | b | >= 15deg and in various…

The faint stellar halos of galaxies contain key information about the oldest stars and the process of galaxy formation. A previous study of stacked SDSS images of disk galaxies has revealed a halo with an abnormally red r-i colour,…

The current knowledge of the abundance structure in the Milky Way is reviewed. Special emphasis is put on recent results for stars with kinematics typical of the thin and the thick disks, respectively, and how these results can, apart from…

The halo structure at high Galactic latitudes near both the north and south poles is studied using SDSS and SuperCOSMOS data. For the south cap halo, the archive of the SuperCOSMOS photographic photometry sky survey is used. The coincident…

The atomic hydrogen gas (HI) disk in the outer region (beyond ~10 kpc from the centre) of Milky Way can provide valuable information about the structure of the dark matter halo. The recent 3-D thickness map of the outer HI disk from the all…

Most of the visible mass in a typical spiral galaxy is distributed in a thin disk, with a radial extent much larger than its thickness. While the planar disk structure, including non-axisymmetric features such as spiral structure, has been…

The presence of radial truncations in stellar disks is reviewed. There is ample evidence that many disk galaxies have relatively shaprt truncations in their disks. These often are symmetric and independent of the wavelength band of the…

Based on high-resolution spectra obtained with the MIKE spectrograph on the Magellan telescopes we present detailed elemental abundances for 64 red giant stars in the inner and outer Galactic disk. For the inner disk sample (4-7 kpc from…

We present {complexity} of the Galactic outer disc {by fitting the stellar volume densities of the red giant branch stars with a two-disc component model}. {The discs are confirmed to} extend to $R\sim19$\,kpc. The radial density profile of…

The recently emerging conviction that thick disks are prevalent in disk galaxies, and their seemingly ubiquitous old ages, means that the formation of the thick disk, perhaps more than any other component, holds the key to unravelling the…