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Related papers: The Milky Way disk

200 papers

Interstellar dust plays a central role in the evolution of galaxies by shaping star formation, altering observed stellar properties, and redistributing radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum. In the Milky Way, dust is concentrated in…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-09-19 H. -L. Guo , B. -Q. Chen , H. -B. Yuan , X. -W. Liu

In this review I will discuss the comparison between model results and observational data for the Milky Way, the predictive power of such models as well as their limits. Such a comparison, known as Galactic archaeology, allows us to impose…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-09-08 Francesca Matteucci

We construct a model for the Galactic globular cluster system based on a realistic gravitational potential and a distribution function (DF) analytic in the action integrals. The DF comprises disc and halo components whose functional forms…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-02-08 James Binney , Leong Khim Wong

The vertical structure of stellar discs provides key constraints on their formation and evolution. Nearby spirals, including the Milky Way, host thin and thick components that may arise either from an early turbulent phase or from the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-04-14 Marloes van Asselt , Francesca Rizzo , Luca Di Mascolo

The Galactic disk retains a vast amount of information about how it came to be, and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-18 Joss Bland-Hawthorn , Mark Krumholz , Ken Freeman

We live in an age where an enormous amount of astrometric, photometric, asteroseismic, and spectroscopic data of Milky Way stars are being acquired, many orders of magnitude larger than about a decade ago. Thanks to the Gaia astrometric…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-06-13 Ivan Minchev

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…

We explore the three-dimensional structure of a sample of $\sim$ 16000 young giant stars in the Galactic disc out to $\sim$8 kpc in heliocentric distance. This population traces a thin disc with a local vertical scale height of $h_{Z \odot}…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-14 E. Poggio , R. Drimmel , S. Khanna , R. Andrae , M. G. Lattanzi

The dominant physical processes responsible for the formation and longevity of giant gaseous and stellar discs in galaxies remain controversial. Although they are rare (less than 10 confirmed as of now), giant low-surface brightness (gLSB)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-09-25 Anna Saburova , Igor Chilingarian , Anastasia Kasparova , Ivan Katkov , Daniel Fabricant , Roman Uklein

In this fourth article on weighing the Galactic disk using the shape of the phase-space spiral, we have tested our method on a billion particle three-dimensional N-body simulation, comprised of a Milky Way like host galaxy and a merging…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-07-06 Axel Widmark , Jason A. S. Hunt , Chervin F. P. Laporte , Giacomo Monari

Despite the recent advancements in the field of galaxy formation and evolution, fully self-consistent simulations are still unable to make the detailed predictions necessary for the planned and ongoing large spectroscopic and photometry…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-08-19 Ivan Minchev , Cristina Chiappini , Marie Martig

The prevailing model of galaxy formation proposes that galaxies like the Milky Way are built through a series of mergers with smaller galaxies over time. However, the exact details of the Milky Way's assembly history remain uncertain. In…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-12-18 Lekshmi Thulasidharan , Elena D'Onghia , Robert Benjamin , Ronald Drimmel , Eloisa Poggio , Anna Queiroz

The generation of spiral arms and the mechanisms controlling their properties within a realistic cosmological framework - the complete understanding is still beyond our grasp. Using a statistically significant sample of Milky Way- and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-10-31 Soumavo Ghosh , Elena D'Onghia

Unveiling the 3D shape of the Milky Way's dark-matter halo is critical to understanding its formation history. We created an innovative dynamical model with minimal assumptions on the internal dynamical structures and accommodates a highly…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-26 Ling Zhu , Runsheng Cai , Xi Kang , Xiang-Xiang Xue , Chengqun Yang , Lan Zhang , Shude Mao , Chao Liu

We examine the outer Galactic HI disk for deviations from the b=0 plane by constructing maps of disk surface density, mean height, and thickness. We find that the Galactic warp is well described by a vertical offset plus two Fourier modes…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 E. S. Levine , Leo Blitz , Carl Heiles

We combine optical and radio observations to trace the spiral structure in the Third Quadrant of the Milky Way. The optical observations consist of a large sample of young open clusters and associations, whereas the radio observations…

Large spectroscopic and astrometric surveys have revealed complex wave-like features in the Milky Way disk, suggesting that its kinematic and chemical structures are shaped by time-dependent perturbations. Recent studies have reported…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-05-08 Jifei Wang , Zhuohan Li , Chengdong Li , Yuqin Chen , Chengqun Yang , Zixi Guo , Zhou Fan , Hongrui Gu , Maoli Bu

Frankel et al (2020) reported that the rate of diffusion in angular momentum by stars in the disk of the Milky Way was about ten times faster than the rate of heating, which places a stringent requirement on the nature of disk star…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-01-31 J A Sellwood , J Binney

CONTEXT. The maximum size of the Galactic stellar disk is not yet known. Some studies have suggested an abrupt drop-off of the stellar density of the disk at Galactocentric distances $R\gtrsim 15$ kpc, which means that in practice no disk…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-05-09 M. Lopez-Corredoira , C. Allende Prieto , F. Garzon , H. Wang , C. Liu , L. Deng

The radial distribution of mass in a disk galaxy is strongly constrained by its rotation curve. The separate contributions from the individual stellar populations and dark matter (DM) are not easily disentangled, however, especially since…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 J A Sellwood