Related papers: Charting Unexplored Dwarf Galaxy Territory With RR…

Almost every known low-luminosity Milky Way dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellite galaxy contains at least one RR Lyrae star. Assuming that a fraction of distant (60 < d_{helio} < 100 kpc) Galactic halo RR Lyrae stars are members of yet to be…

We report the discovery of distant RR Lyrae stars, including the most distant known in the Milky Way, using data taken in the $g-$band with the Dark Energy Camera as part of the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS; 2014 campaign). We detect…

We present a search for RR Lyrae stars using the full six-year data set from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) covering ~5,000 sq. deg. of the southern sky. Using a multi-stage multi-variate classification and light curve template-fitting…

The discovery of very distant stars in the halo of the Milky Way provides valuable tracers on the Milky Way mass and its formation. Beyond 100 kpc from the Galactic center, most of the stars are likely to be in faint dwarf galaxies or tidal…

We report the detection of RR Lyrae variable stars in Crater II, a recently discovered large and diffuse satellite dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way (MW). Based on B, V time-series photometry obtained with the Korea Microlensing Telescope…

RR Lyrae stars are standard candles with characteristic photometric variability and serve as powerful tracers of Galactic structure, substructure, accretion history, and dark matter content. Here we report the discovery of distant RR Lyrae…

We study the prospects for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to find new dwarf spheroidal galaxies in the Milky Way. Adopting models of Milky-Way halo substructure and phenomenological prescriptions connecting subhalos and…

We have conducted a search of a 9 deg$^{2}$ region of the CFHTLS around the Milky Way analog M101 (D$\sim$7 Mpc), in order to look for previously unknown low surface brightness galaxies. This search has uncovered 38 new low surface…

We used a combination of public RR Lyrae star catalogs and a Bayesian methodology to derive robust structural parameters of the inner Halo (<25 kpc) and Thick Disc of the Milky Way. RR Lyrae stars are an unequivocal tracer of old metal-poor…

We present the results of an all-sky, deep optical survey for faint Local Group dwarf galaxies. Candidate objects were selected from the second Palomar survey (POSS-II) and ESO/SRC survey plates and follow-up observations performed to…

In order to constrain the evolutionary history of the Milky Way, we hunt for faint RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) using Dark Energy Camera data from the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS) and the Halo Outskirts With Variable Stars (HOWVAST)…

Over the past five years, searches in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data have more than doubled the number of known dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, and have revealed a population of ultra-faint galaxies with luminosities smaller than…

We predict that there is a population of low-luminosity dwarf galaxies orbiting within the halo of the Milky Way that have surface brightnesses low enough to have escaped detection in star-count surveys. The overall count of stealth…

The dwarf galaxy companions to the Milky Way are unique cosmological laboratories. With luminosities as low as 10^-7 L_MW, they inhabit the lowest mass dark matter halos known to host stars and are presently the most direct tracers of the…

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 possible existence of stellar halos in low-mass galaxies is being intensely discussed nowadays after some recent discoveries of stars located in the outskirts of dwarf galaxies of the Local Group. RR Lyrae stars can be used to identify…

We correct the observed Milky Way satellite luminosity function for luminosity bias using published completeness limits for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR5. Assuming that the spatial distribution of Milky Way satellites tracks the subhalos…

The discovery of Ultra-Faint Dwarf (UFD) galaxies in the halo of the Milky Way extends the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function to a few hundred solar luminosities. This extremely low luminosity regime poses a significant challenge…

We utilize a complete sample of RR Lyrae stars discovered by the QUEST survey using light curves to design selection criteria based on SDSS colors. Thanks to the sensitivity of the u-g color to surface gravity and of g-r color to effective…

We present a sample of 148 candidate RR Lyrae stars selected from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) commissioning data for about 100 deg2 of sky surveyed twice with Delta(t) = 1.9946 days. Although the faint magnitude limit of the SDSS allows…