Related papers: A halo blue straggler on a highly eccentric retrog…
In this manuscript, very blue-shifted broad H$\alpha$ with shifted velocity $\sim$2200km/s is reported in the low redshift Type-1.9 AGN SDSS J1052+1036. Blue-shifted broad emission lines may arise due to the presence of a rotating gas disk…
Context. The Galactic centre is hazardous for stellar clusters because of the strong tidal force. Supposedly, many clusters were destroyed and contributed stars to the crowded stellar field of the bulge and the nuclear stellar cluster.…
Based on the rate of change of its orbital period, PSR J2043+1711 has a substantial peculiar acceleration of 3.5 $\pm$ 0.8 mm/s/yr, which deviates from the acceleration predicted by equilibrium Milky Way models at a $4\sigma$ level. The…
We analyze the spectrum of an unusually-low mass white dwarf, SDSSJ123410.37-022802.9 (0335-264-52000), found in our recent, white dwarf catalog from the SDSS DR1 data release. Two independent, model atmosphere fits result in an accurate…
We present VLT-FORS1 spectra of a sample of 34 faint 20.0 < g* < 21.1 A-type stars selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release, with the goal of measuring the velocity dispersion of blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars in…
Hypervelocity stars are rare objects, mostly main-sequence (MS) B stars, traveling so fast that they will eventually escape from the Milky Way. Recently, it has been shown that the popular Hills mechanism, in which a binary system is…
A massive galaxy cluster can serve as a magnifying glass for distant stellar populations, with strong gravitational lensing exposing details in the lensed background galaxies that would otherwise be undetectable. The MACS J0416.1-2403…
The fastest moving stars provide insight into several fundamental properties of the Galaxy, including the escape velocity as a function of Galactocentric radius, the total mass, and the nature and frequency of stellar encounters with the…
Lenticular galaxies (S0s) were considered mainly as passive evolved spirals due to environmental effects for a long time; however, most S0s in the field cannot fit into this common scenario. In this work, we study one special case, SDSS…
We present high-precision photometry of the hypervelocity star SDSS J090745.0+024507 (HVS), which has a Galactic rest-frame radial velocity of v=709 km/s, and so has likely been ejected from the supermassive black hole in the Galactic…
We present an analysis of optical HST/STIS and HST/FOS spectroscopy of 6 blue stragglers found in the globular clusters M3, NGC6752 and NGC6397. These stars are a subsample of a set of ~50 blue stragglers and stars above the main sequence…
To probe the nature of stellar evolution in dense environments, we study the dense core of the globular cluster Messier 13 using pre-refurbishment Planetary Camera-I images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. We find 15 blue straggler…
This paper reports preliminary yet compelling kinematical inferences for N ~ 600 carbon-rich dwarf stars that demonstrate around 30% to 60% are members of the Galactic halo. The study uses a spectroscopically and non-kinematically selected…
A new moving group comprising at least four Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars is identified at (l,b) = (65 deg, 48 deg). The horizontal branch at g0=18.9 magnitude implies a distance of 50 kpc from the Sun. The heliocentric radial velocity…
A dynamical characterization of dark matter dominated dwarf galaxies from their observed effects on galactic disks (i.e. Galactoseismology) has remained an elusive goal. Here, we present preliminary results from spectroscopic observations…
Based on high quality spectral data (spectral resolution R>60000) within the wavelength range of 3550-5000 AA we determined main parameters (effective temperature, surface gravity, microturbulent velocity, and chemical element abundances…
By using high-resolution spectra acquired with FLAMES-GIRAFFE at the ESO/VLT, we measured radial and rotational velocities of 115 stars in the Galactic globular cluster M55. After field decontamination based on the radial velocity values,…
Blue straggler stars (BSS) are abundantly observed in all Galactic globular clusters (GGC) where data exist. However, observations alone cannot reveal the relative importance of various formation channels or the typical formation times for…
We present an alternative interpretation of the nature of the extremely cool, high-velocity white dwarfs identified by Oppenheimer et al (2001) in a high-latitude astrometric survey. We argue that the velocity distribution of the majority…
The stellar halos of large galaxies represent a vital probe of the processes of galaxy evolution. They are the remnants of the initial bouts of star formation during the collapse of the proto-galactic cloud, coupled with imprint of ancient…