Related papers: Fitting orbits to tidal streams with proper motion…
This paper shows that gravitating bodies travelling through the Galaxy can trap lighter interstellar particles that pass nearby with small relative velocities onto temporarily-bound orbits. The capture mechanism is driven by the Galactic…
Thin stellar streams, such as those resulting from the tidal disruption of globular clusters, have long been known and used as probes of the gravitational potential of our Galaxy, both its visible and dark contents. In particular, the…
Two studies have recently reported the discovery of pronounced Halo substructure in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) commissioning data. Here we show that this Halo substructure is almost in its entirety due to the expected tidal stream…
The main aim of this paper is to report two new detections of tidal debris in the northern stream of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy located at 45 arcdeg and 55 arcdeg from the center of galaxy. Our observational approach is based on deep…
A simple model of how objects of different masses stream towards each other as they cluster gravitationally is described. The model shows how the mean streaming velocity of dark matter particles is related to the motions of the parent dark…
We present a new method for constraining the Milky Way halo gravitational potential by simultaneously fitting multiple tidal streams. This method requires full three-dimensional positions and velocities for all stars to be fit, but does not…
We use data from the Pan-STARRS1 survey to present a panoramic view of the Sagittarius tidal stream in the southern Galactic hemisphere. As a result of the extensive sky coverage of Pan-STARRS1, the southern stream is visible along more…
Stellar streams produced from dwarf galaxies provide direct evidence of the hierarchical formation of the Milky Way. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of the "LMS-1" stellar stream, that we detect by searching for wide streams…
Cold or Warm, the Dark Matter substructure spectrum must extend to objects with masses as low as $10^7 M_\odot$, according to the most recent Lyman-$\alpha$ measurements. Around a Milky Way-like galaxy, more than a thousand of these…
The dark matter subhalos orbiting in a galactic halo perturb the orbits of stars in thin stellar streams. Over time the random velocities in the streams develop non-Gaussian wings. The rate of velocity increase is approximately a random…
Interactions between galaxies are common and are an important factor in determining their physical properties such as position along the Hubble sequence and star-formation rate. There are many possible galaxy interaction mechanisms,…
The cold dark matter picture predicts an abundance of substructure within the Galactic halo. However, most substructures host no stars and can only be detected indirectly. Stellar streams present a promising probe of this dark substructure.…
The Ophiuchus stellar stream presents a dynamical puzzle: its old stellar populations ($\sim 12$ Gyr) cannot be reconciled with (1) its orbit in a simple model for the Milky Way potential and (2) its short angular extent, both of which…
Tidal interactions between disc galaxies depend on galaxy structure, but the details of this relationship are incompletely understood. I have constructed a three-parameter grid of bulge/disc/halo models broadly consistent with $\Lambda$CDM,…
Stars that escape globular clusters form tidal tails that are predominantly shaped by the global distribution of mass in the Galaxy, but also preserve a historical record of small-scale perturbations. Using deep $grz$ photometry from…
It has been suggested that a resonance between a rotating bar and stars in the solar neighbourhood can produce the so called 'Hercules stream'. Recently, a second bar may have been identified in the Galactic centre, the so called 'long…
The flattening of spiral-galaxy rotation curves is unnatural in view of the expectations from Kepler's third law and a central mass. It is interesting, however, that the radius-independence velocity is what one expects in one less…
We detect a tidal stream generated by the globular cluster NGC 3201 extending over ~140 degrees on the sky, using the Gaia DR2 data, with the maximum likelihood method we presented previously to study the M68 tidal stream. Most of the…
We assemble 121 spectroscopically-confirmed halo carbon stars, drawn from the literature, exhibiting measurable variability in the Catalina Surveys. We present their periods and amplitudes, which are used to estimate distances from…
By means of direct N-body simulations and simplified numerical models, we study the formation and characteristics of the tidal tails around Palomar 5, along its orbit in the Milky Way potential. Unlike previous findings, we are able to…