Related papers: Mapping the Asymmetric Thick Disk: The Hercules Th…
We use hydrodynamic simulations of minor mergers of galaxies to investigate the nature of surface brightness excesses at large radii observed in some spiral galaxies: antitruncated stellar disks. We find that this process can produce the…
We develop a method for recovering the global density distribution of the ancient Galactic stellar halo prior to disk formation, based on the present orbits of metal-poor stars observed in the solar neighborhood. The method relies on the…
We observed the nearly edge-on debris disk system HD 111520 at $J$, $H$, & $K1$ near infrared (NIR) bands using both the spectral and polarization modes of the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). With these new observations, we have performed an…
We use photometric redshifts derived from new $u$-band through 4.5$\mu$m Spitzer IRAC photometry in the 4.8\,deg$^2$ of the XMM-LSS field to construct surface density maps in the redshift range 0.1-1.5. Our density maps show evidence for…
Theories of thick disk formation can be differentiated by measurements of stellar elemental abundances. We have undertaken a study of metal-poor stars selected from the RAVE spectroscopic survey of bright stars to establish whether or not…
We have obtained high-resolution, high signal-to-noise spectra for 899 F and G dwarf stars in the Solar neighbourhood. The stars were selected on the basis of their kinematic properties to trace the thin and thick discs, the Hercules…
The Milky Way harbours two disks that appear distinct concerning scale-heights, kinematics, and elemental abundance patterns. Recent years have seen a surge of studies of the elemental abundance trends in the disks using high resolution…
We aim at studying the abundance gradients along the Galactic disk and their dependence upon several parameters: a threshold in the surface gas density regulating star formation, the star formation efficiency, the timescale for the…
Using the MIKE spectrograph, mounted on the 6.5 m Magellan/Clay telescope at the Las Campanas observatory in Chile, we have obtained high-resolution spectra for 60 F and G dwarf stars, all likely members of a density enhancement in the…
We present a sample of 54 disk galaxies which have well developed extraplanar structures. We selected them using visual inspections from the color images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Since the sizes of the extraplanar structures are…
Circumstellar dust disks have been observed around many nearby stars. However, many stars are part of binary or multiple stellar systems. A natural question arises regarding the presence and properties of such disks in systems with more…
We present minimum chi-squared fits of power law and Hernquist density profiles to F-turnoff stars in eight 2.5 deg wide stripes of SDSS data: five in the North Galactic Cap and three in the South Galactic cap. Portions of the stellar…
We review the most recent evidence for the amazing properties of the density distribution of dark matter around spiral galaxies. Their rotation curves, coadded according to the galaxy luminosity, conform to an universal profile which can be…
We study the relation between the internal structure of early-type galaxies and their environment using 70 strong gravitational lenses from the Sloan ACS Lens Survey. The Sloan database is used to determine two measures of overdensity of…
We introduce a new maximum likelihood method to model the density profile of Blue Horizontal Branch and Blue Straggler stars and apply it to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 8 (DR8) photometric catalogue. There are a large number…
We model the mass distributions of 40 high surface brightness spiral galaxies inside their optical radii, deriving parameters of mass models by matching the predicted velocities to observed velocity maps. We use constant mass-to-light disk…
Atmospheric parameters and oxygen abundances of 825 nearby FGK stars are derived using high-quality spectra and a non-LTE analysis of the 777 nm O I triplet lines. We assign a kinematic probability for the stars to be thin-disk (P1),…
Accurate characterization of thick disc properties from recent kinematic and photometric surveys provides converging evidences that this intermediate population is a sequel of the violent heating of early disc populations by a merging…
We highlight some results from our detailed abundance analysis study of 703 kinematically selected F and G dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood. The analysis is based on spectra of high-resolution (R=45000 to 110000) and high…
Recent observations in the 21cm line with the Green Bank Telescope have changed our view of the neutral interstellar medium (ISM) in several ways. The new data show that in the inner parts of the Milky Way the disk-halo interface is…