Related papers: Comments on the "Monoceros" affair

Evidence from a variety of sources points towards the existence of a bar in the central few kpc of the Galaxy. The measurements roughly agree on the direction of the bar major axis, but other parameters (axis ratio, size, pattern speed) are…

In this contribution we summarize recent achievements by our group on the understanding of the structure of the outer Galactic disk, with particular emphasis to the outer disk extent, and the spiral structure beyond the solar circle.

The thickness of a galaxy's disk provides a valuable probe of its formation and evolution history. Observations of the Milky Way and local galaxies have revealed an ubiquitous disk structure with two distinctive components: an old thick…

This article is based on our discussion session on Milky Way models at the 592 WE-Heraeus Seminar, Reconstructing the Milky Way's History: Spectroscopic Surveys, Asteroseismology and Chemodynamical models. The discussion focused on the…

In this review, we present a brief description of observational efforts to understand the Galactic thick disk and its relation to the other Galactic components. This review primarily focused on elemental abundance patterns of the thick disk…

I selectively review the various dynamical scenarios that have been explored to date, especially those that illustrate the conundrums. In short, although the existence of asymmetries are convincing enough, the interpretation remains…

We present a scenario for the production of dynamically cold rings around the Milky Way via a high-eccentricity, flyby encounter. These initial conditions are more cosmologically motivated than those considered in previous works. We find…

Thanks to modern sky surveys, over twenty stellar streams and overdensity structures have been discovered in the halo of the Milky Way. In this paper, we present an analysis of spectroscopic observations of individual stars from one such…

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…

Can the present dynamics of spiral galaxies tell us something about the merging history, the formation and evolution of disks? Galaxy interactions thicken or destroy disks; the simultaneous presence of thick and thin disks is a tracer of…

The Milky Way harbours two disks that appear distinct concerning scale-heights, kinematics, and elemental abundance patterns. Recent years have seen a surge of studies of the elemental abundance trends in the disks using high resolution…

Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…

The Milky Way is expected to host an accreted disc of stars and dark matter. This forms as massive >1:10 mergers are preferentially dragged towards the disc plane by dynamical friction and then tidally shredded. The accreted disc likely…

Almost 80 years have passed since Trumpler's analysis of the Galactic open cluster system laid one of the main foundations for understanding the nature and structure of the Milky Way. Since then, the open cluster system has been recognised…

With the discovery of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal (Ibata et al. 1994), a galaxy caught in the process of merging with the Milky Way, the hunt for other such accretion events has become a very active field of astrophysical research. The…

A new view on our Galaxy has recently emerged, with large consequences on its formation scenarios. Not only new dwarf satellites have been detected, still orbiting and tidally disrupting, but also a multitude of stellar streams or tidal…

The wealth of data in the past decades, and especially in the past 15 years has transformed our picture of the gas around the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies. There is good evidence for extraplanar gas that is a few kpc in height and is…

We study the gravitational lensing effects of spiral galaxies by taking a model of the Milky Way and computing its lensing properties. The model is composed of a spherical Hernquist bulge, a Miyamoto-Nagai disc and an isothermal halo. As a…

Our understanding of the Milky Way disk is rapidly improving with the recent advent of the high quality and vast amount of observational data. We summarize our current view of the structure of the Milky Way disk, such as the masses and…

Our Galaxy is a barred spiral. Recent work based on the COBE NIR data implies a small bulge-bar and a disk with a short scale-length. The corotation radius of the bar is in the range 3-4.5 kpc. The stellar density distribution beyond the…