Related papers: The Milky Way stellar populations in CFHTLS fields
The measurement of the structure of stellar populations in the Milky Way disk places fundamental constraints on models of galaxy formation and evolution. Previously, the disk's structure has been studied in terms of populations defined…
The spatial, kinematic, and elemental-abundance structure of the Milky Way's stellar disk is complex, and has been difficult to dissect with local spectroscopic or global photometric data. Here, we develop and apply a rigorous density…
The history of the Milky Way Galaxy is written in the properties of its stellar populations. Here we analyse stars observed as part of surveys of local dwarf spheroidal galaxies, but which from their kinematics are highly probable to be…
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…
Thick disks appear to be common in external large spiral galaxies and our own Milky Way also hosts one. The existence of a thick disk is possibly directly linked to the formation history of the host galaxy and if its properties is known it…
We present a low metallicity map of the Milky Way consisting of $\sim$111,000 giants with $-3.5 \lesssim$ [Fe/H] $\lesssim -$0.75, based on public photometry from the second data release of the SkyMapper survey. These stars extend out to…
The stellar velocity distribution function (DF) in the solar vicinity is re-examined using data from the SDSS APOGEE survey's DR16 and \emph{Gaia} DR2. By exploiting APOGEE's ability to chemically discriminate with great reliability the…
The contribution of white dwarfs of the different Galactic populations to the stellar content of our Galaxy is only poorly known. Some authors claim a vast population of halo white dwarfs, which would be in accordance with some…
The separation of the Milky Way disk into a thin and thick component is supported by differences in the spatial, kinematic and metallicity distributions of their stars. These differences have led to the view that the thick disk formed early…
We investigate the radial number density profile and the abundance distribution of faint satellites around central galaxies in the low redshift universe using the CFHT Legacy Survey. We consider three samples of central galaxies with…
We present a stellar populations analysis of the first release of the CFHTLS (Canada-France-Hawai Telescope Legacy Survey) data. A detailed comparison between the Besan\c{c}on model of the Galaxy and the first data release of the…
We study the metal abundances of F and G type stars in the Galactic disk and halo using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey D4 field. For a sample of stars within 7 kpc of the Galactic plane, we derive mean abundance values of…
The spatial structure of stellar populations with different chemical abundances in the Milky Way contains a wealth of information on Galactic evolution over cosmic time. We use data on 14,699 red-clump stars from the APOGEE survey, covering…
We study the evolution of Milky Way thick and thin discs in the light of the most recent observational data. In particular, we analyze abundance gradients of O, N, Fe and Mg along the thin disc as well as the [Mg/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] relations…
Recent spectroscopic observations in the Milky Way suggest that the chemically defined thick disk (stars with high [alpha/Fe] ratios and thus old) has a significantly smaller scale-length than the thin disk. This is in apparent…
Stars and their kinematics provide one of the tools available for studies of the shapes of galaxies and their halos. In this review I focus on two specific applications: the shape of the Milky Way dark halo and the shape of the LMC disk.…
We study the spatial distribution of satellite galaxies by assuming that they follow the dark matter distribution. This assumption is supported by semi-analytical studies based on high-resolution numerical simulations. We find that for a…
We have assembled a spectroscopic sample of low-mass dwarfs observed as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey along one Galactic sightline, designed to investigate the observable properties of the thin and thick disks. This sample of ~7400 K…
The Besan\c{c}on Galaxy model was used to compare the infrared colour distribution of synthetic stars with those from 2MASS observations taking the selection function of the data into account, in order to study the shape of the stellar halo…
We develop a new method to account for the finite lifetimes of stars and trace individual abundances within a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. At variance with previous methods, based on the storage of the (binned) past star…