Related papers: Identifying Star Streams in the Milky Way Halo
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…
Wrapping around the Milky Way, the Sagittarius stream is the dominant substructure in the halo. Our statistical selection method has allowed us to identify 106 highly likely members of the Sagittarius stream. Spectroscopic analysis of…
If the stellar halos of disk galaxies are built up from the disruption of dwarf galaxies, models predict highly structured variations in the stellar populations within these halos. We test this prediction by studying the ratio of blue…
We use Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5) u,g,r,i,z photometry to study Milky Way halo substructure in the area around the North Galactic Cap. A simple color cut (g-r < 0.4) reveals the tidal stream of the Sagittarius…
The recently discovered Virgo stellar over-density, which expands over \~1000deg^2 perpendicularly to the Galactic disk plane (7< Z <15 kpc, R~7 kpc), is the largest clump of tidal debris ever detected in the outer halo and is likely…
Stellar halo substructures were identified using statistical photometric parallax of blue main sequence turnoff stars from fourteen Sloan Digital Sky Survey stripes in the north Galactic cap. Four structures are consistent with previous…
An all high-latitude sky survey for cool carbon giant stars in the Galactic halo has revealed 75 such stars, of which the majority are new detections. Of these, more than half are clustered on a Great Circle on the sky which intersects 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…
We have analyzed the phase space distribution of a sample of about 900 non--kinematically selected low metallicity stars in the solar vicinity. The stars primarily represent the thick disk and halo populations of the Milky Way. We aim to…
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…
We propose and test a method for applying statistical photometric parallax to main sequence turn off (MSTO) stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Using simulated data, we show that if our density model is similar to the actual…
Recent analyses of the stellar stream of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy have claimed that the kinematics and three-dimensional location of the M-giant stars in this structure constrain the dark matter halo of our Galaxy to possess a triaxial…
We have probed a section (l ~ 150, b ~ -60) of the trailing tidal arm of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy by identifying a sample of Red Clump stream stars. Red Clump stars are not generally found in the halo field, but are found in…
We use Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey data for 170 deg^2, recalibrated and transformed to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugri photometric system, to study the distribution of near-turnoff main-sequence stars in the Galactic halo…
The extensive span of the Sagittarius (Sgr) stream makes it a promising tool for studying the Milky Way gravitational potential. Characterizing its stellar kinematics can constrain halo properties and provide a benchmark for the Cold Dark…
A pole-count analysis of the infrared 2MASS survey is presented, in order to identify faint stream-like structures within the halo of the Milky Way. Selecting stars with colours consistent with M-giant stars, we find a strong over-density…
We develop a framework for modelling the Milky Way using stellar streams and a wide range of photometric and kinematic observations. Through the use of mock data we demonstrate that a standard suite of Galactic observations leads to…
We present 2-degree field spectroscopic observations of a sample of 96 A-type stars selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3 (SDSS DR3). Our aim is to identify blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars in order to measure the…
We present a spectroscopic sample of 910 distant halo stars from the Hypervelocity Star survey from which we derive the velocity dispersion profile of the Milky Way halo. The sample is a mix of 74% evolved horizontal branch stars and 26%…
The hierarchical model of galaxy formation predicts that the Milky Way halo is populated by tidal debris of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. Due to long dynamical times, debris from the lowest mass objects remains coherent as thin and…