Related papers: Galactic Spiral Structure
Spiral galaxies are common in the local Universe, but their formation, evolution, and interplay with bars remain poorly understood. We use a sample of 391 nearby galaxies from the S$^4$G survey to characterise the winding angle and…
We have imaged a sample of 20 face-on spiral galaxies in H\alpha and in the near-IR K-band (2.2 microns), in order to determine the location and strength of star formation with respect to perturbations in the old stellar population. We…
The velocity, position, and action variable evolution of a tidal stream drawn out of a star cluster in a triaxial isochrone potential containing a sub-halo population reproduces many of the orbital effects of more general cosmological halos…
Stellar streams are key players in many aspects of Milky Way studies and, in particular, studying their orbital dynamics is crucial for furthering our understanding of the Milky Way's gravitational potential. Although this is not a trivial…
Spiral patterns in some disc galaxies have two arms in the centre, and three or more arms on the periphery. The same result is also obtained in numerical simulations of stellar and gaseous discs. We argue that such patterns may occur due to…
The Galaxy's stellar halo seems to be a tangle of disrupted systems that have been tidally stretched out into streams. Each stream approximately delineates an orbit in the Galactic force-field. In the first paper in this series we showed…
The pattern speeds of spiral galaxies are closely related to the flow of material in their disks. Flows that follow the `precessing ellipses' paradigm (see e.g., Kalnajs 1973) are likely associated with slowly rotating spirals, which have…
The nature of our Milky Way Galaxy is reexamined from an eclectic point of view. Evidence for a central bar, for example, is not reflected in the distribution of RR Lyrae variables in the central bulge [4,5], and it is not clear if either a…
The angular-momentum distribution of classical Cepheids in the outer Milky Way disc is bi-modal with a gap at $L_\mathrm{gap}=2950\,\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\,\mathrm{kpc}$, corresponding to $R=13\,\mathrm{kpc}$, while no similar feature…
Stellar streams from disrupted globular clusters are excellent probes of dark matter (DM) subhalos. Observed Milky Way streams display a remarkable diversity of features: spurs, gaps, kinks, cocoons, and density variations, many attributed…
Observational data indicate that the Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy. Computation facilities and availability of data from Galactic surveys stimulate the appearance of models of the Galactic structure. More efforts to build dynamical…
The process that leads to the formation of the bright star forming sites observed along prominent spiral arms remains elusive. We present results of a multi-wavelength study of a spiral arm segment in the nearby grand-design spiral galaxy…
Recent spectroscopic and high resolution $HST$-imaging observations have revealed significant numbers of ``passive'' spiral galaxies in distant clusters, with all the morphological hallmarks of a spiral galaxy (in particular, spiral arm…
Relations between star formation rates along the spiral arms and the velocities of gas inflow into the arms in grand-design galaxy NGC 628 were studied. We found that the radial distribution of average star formation rate in individual star…
With the aim of studying the nonlinear stellar and gaseous response to the gravitational potential of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, we have modeled 3D galactic spiral arms as a superposition of inhomogeneous oblate spheroids and added…
While the galactic density wave theory is over 50 years old and well known in science, whether it fits our own Milky Way disk has been difficult to say. Here we show a substructure inside the spiral arms. This substructure is reversing with…
We show that in N-body simulations of isolated spiral discs, spiral arms appear to transient, recurring features that co-rotate with the stellar disc stars at all radii. As a consequence, stars around the spiral arm continually feel a…
Using an equation of motion for a self-gravitating filament, we show how galactic spiral arms might be created and sustained. We find that the combination of differential rotation of the galactic disk and the self-gravity of the arm (as…
We compare the observed radial velocity of different arm tracers, taken near the tangent to a spiral arm. A slight difference is predicted by the density wave theory, given the shock predicted at the entrance to the inner spiral arm. In…
The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not conclusive, even for the disc regions in the solar neighbourhood. Especially, the arm-like structures uncovered from the over-density maps of evolved stars are inconsistent with the commonly…