Related papers: The Milky Way has no thick disk
The Galactic bulge of the Milky Way is made up of stars with a broad range of metallicity, -3.0 < [Fe/H] < 1 dex. The mean of the Metallicity Distribution Function (MDF) decreases as a function of height z from the plane and, more weakly,…
We find that the relative contribution of satellite galaxies accreted at high redshift to the stellar population of the Milky Way's smooth halo increases with distance, becoming observable relative to the classical smooth halo about 15 kpc…
(Abridged) We have used the atmospheric parameters, [alpha/Fe] abundances and radial velocities, determined from the Gaia-ESO Survey GIRAFFE spectra of FGK-type stars (iDR1), to provide a chemo-kinematical characterisation of the disc…
We investigate the metallicity, age, and orbital anatomy of the inner Milky Way, specifically focussing on the outer bar region. We integrated a sample of APOGEE DR16 inner Galaxy stars in a state of the art bar-bulge potential with a slow…
The elemental abundance distribution of stars encodes the history of the gas-phase abundance in the Milky Way. Without a large, unbiased sample of highly precise stellar ages, the exact timing and nature of this history must be inferred…
The age and chemical characteristics of the Galactic bulge link to the formation and evolutionary history of the Galaxy. Data-driven methods and large surveys enable stellar ages and precision chemical abundances to be determined for vast…
We present initial results from our JWST NIRSpec program to study the $\alpha$-abundances in the M31 disk. The Milky Way has two chemically-defined disks, the low-$\alpha$ and high-$\alpha$ disks, which are closely related to the thin and…
Observational studies are finding stars believed to be relics of the earliest stages of hierarchical mass assembly of the Milky Way (i.e., proto-Galaxy). In this work, we contextualize these findings by studying the masses, ages, spatial…
We study the role of radial motions of stars and gas on the evolution of abundance profiles in the Milky Way disk. We investigate, in a parametrized way, the impact of radial flows of gas and radial migration of stars induced mainly by the…
We have pursued two different methods to analyze the old stellar population near the Galactic plane, using data from the 2MASS survey. The first method is based on the isolation of the red clump giant population in the color-magnitude…
The metal-poor stars of a galaxy offer insights into that galaxy's early formation processes and accretion history. Here, we investigate whether the metal-poor stars of our Milky Way galaxy exhibit any characteristic trends in…
The analysis of the kinematics of solar neighbourhood stars shows that the low and high metallicity tails of the thin disc are populated by objects which orbital properties suggest an origin in the outer and inner galactic disc,…
We analyze the oxygen abundances of a stellar sample representative of the two major Galactic populations: the thin and thick disks. The aim is to investigate the differences between members of the Galactic disks and to contribute to the…
In a LCDM cosmology, the Milky Way accretes satellites into the stellar disc. We use cosmological simulations to assess the frequency of near disc plane and higher inclination accretion events, and collisionless simulations of satellite…
Using a sample of 69,919 red giants from the SDSS-III/APOGEE Data Release 12, we measure the distribution of stars in the [$\alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] plane and the metallicity distribution functions (MDF) across an unprecedented volume of the…
We present a model of the Galactic Habitable Zone (GHZ), described in terms of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the Galaxy that may favour the development of complex life. The Milky Way galaxy is modelled using a computational…
Using simulated galaxies in their cosmological context, we analyse how the flaring of mono-age populations (MAPs) influences the flaring and the age structure of geometrically-defined thick discs. We also explore under which circumstances…
We describe a novel framework to model galaxy spectra with two cospatial stellar populations, such as may represent a bulge & bar or thick & thin disc, and apply it to APOGEE spectra in the inner $\sim$2 kpc of M31, as well as to stacked…
Aims: We derive the 3-D HI volume density distribution for the Galactic disk out to R = 60 kpc. Methods: Our analysis is based on parameters for the warp and rotation curve derived previously. The data are taken from the…
The Milky Way (MW) galaxy is in focus, thanks to new observational data. Here we shed new light on the MW's past by studying the structural evolution of MW progenitors, which we identify from extragalactic surveys. Specifically, we…