Related papers: The infant Milky Way
We present the first results of an ongoing program to investigate the kinematic characteristics of high redshift damped lya systems. Because damped lya systems are widely believed to be the progenitors of current massive galaxies, an…
Galaxies with Milky Way-like stellar masses have a wide range of bulge and black hole masses; in turn, these correlate with other properties such as star formation history. While many processes may drive bulge formation, major and minor…
The phase-space structure of our Galaxy holds the key to understand and reconstruct its formation. The Lambda-CDM model predicts a richly structured phase-space distribution of dark matter and (halo) stars, consisting of streams of…
The star formation rate history of the Milky Way is derived using the chromospheric age distribution for 552 stars in the solar neighborhood. The stars sample birthsites distributed over a very large range of distances because of orbital…
The lowest luminosity (L < 10^5 L_sun) Milky Way satellite galaxies represent the extreme lower limit of the galaxy luminosity function. These ultra-faint dwarfs are the oldest, most dark matter-dominated, most metal-poor, and least…
The ages, metallicities, alpha-elements and integrals of motion of globular clusters (GCs) accreted by the Milky Way from disrupted satellites remain largely unchanged over time. Here we have used these conserved properties in combination…
As massive black holes (MBHs) grow from lower-mass seeds, it is natural to expect that a leftover population of progenitor MBHs should also exist in the present universe. Dwarf galaxies undergo a quiet merger history, and as a result, we…
The difference in density profiles of the contributions from different density peaks to dark matter halos results in certain expectations about the Milky Way's stellar halo. We cut our simulated halo stars into two populations: those…
We investigate the chemical properties of local galaxies within a cosmological framework in the hierarchical picture of galaxy formation. To this aim, we use a hierarchical semi-analytic model which includes the contribution from (i) low…
To probe the progenitors of the numerous massive spirals requires to dissect distant galaxy properties through spatially-resolved kinematics, detailed morphologies and photometry from UV to mid-IR. So far IMAGES is the only representative…
Stellar abundance pattern of neutron-capture elements such as barium is used as a powerful tool to infer how star formation proceeded in dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. It is found that the abundance correlation of barium with iron in…
We study numerical simulations of satellite galaxy disruption in a potential resembling that of the Milky Way. Our goal is to assess whether a merger origin for the stellar halo would leave observable fossil structure in the phase-space…
Aims: We present a new method that uses luminosity or stellar mass functions combined with clustering measurements to select samples of galaxies at different redshifts likely to follow a progenitor-to-descendant relationship. As the method…
Studies of nearby galaxies including the Milky Way have provided fundamental information on the evolution of structure in the Universe, the existence and nature of dark matter, the origin and evolution of galaxies, and the global features…
Our understanding of how the Galaxy was formed and evolves is severely hampered by the lack of precise constraints on basic stellar properties such as distances, masses, and ages. Here, we show that solar-like pulsating red giants represent…
We present predictions, derived from the EAGLE LCDM cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, for the abundance and properties of galaxies expected to be detected at high redshift by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). We consider the…
Dwarf galaxies are ubiquitous throughout the universe and are extremely sensitive to various forms of internal and external feedback. Over the last two decades, the census of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group and beyond has increased…
The spiral structure of the Milky Way can be simulated by adopting percolation theory, where the active zones are produced by the evolution of many supernova (SN). Here we assume conversely that the percolative process is triggered by…
[Abridged] We map the stellar age distribution ($\lesssim 1$ Gyr) across a 6kpc$\,\times\,$6kpc area of the Galactic disc to constrain our Galaxy's recent star-formation history. Our modelling draws on the sample of Zari et al. (2021) that…
How many low-mass stars, brown dwarfs and free-floating planets are in the Milky Way? And how are they distributed in our Galaxy? Recent studies of Milky Way interlopers in high-redshift observations have revealed a 150-300 pc thick disk of…