Related papers: Charting Unexplored Dwarf Galaxy Territory With RR…
An order of magnitude more dwarf galaxies are expected to inhabit the Local Group, based on currently accepted galaxy formation models, than have been observed. This discrepancy has been noted in environments ranging from the field to rich…
Many studies have shown that RR Lyrae variable stars (RRL) are powerful stellar tracers of Galactic halo structure and satellite galaxies. The Dark Energy Survey (DES), with its deep and wide coverage (g ~ 23.5 mag) in a single exposure;…
In this Letter, we report the discovery of a new dwarf satellite to the Milky Way, located at ($\alpha_{2000}, \delta_{2000}$) $=$ (158.72,51.92) in the constellation of Ursa Major. This object was detected as an overdensity of red,…
We present and discuss optical measurements of the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function down to M_R = -10 in five different local environments of varying galaxy density and morphological content. The environments we studied, in order…
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…
During the analysis of RR Lyrae stars discovered in the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS) taken with the Dark Energy Camera at the 4-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, we found a group of three very distant,…
We place observational constraints on a recently proposed Galactic population, dubbed the shroud (Gyuk & Gates 1999, Gates & Gyuk 2001). The shroud would be a very thick Galactic disk of low luminosity objects, most likely old white dwarfs,…
RR Lyrae variable stars have long been reliable standard candles used to discern structure in the Local Group. With this in mind, we present a routine to identify groupings containing a statistically significant number of RR Lyrae variables…
We present an improved analysis of halo substructure traced by RR Lyrae stars in the SDSS stripe 82 region. With the addition of SDSS-II data, a revised selection method based on new ugriz light curve templates results in a sample of 483 RR…
We discuss the approach of searching low mass dwarf galaxies, $\lesssim10^6\textrm{ M}_{\odot}$, in the general field, using integrated light surveys. By exploring the limiting surface brightness-spatial resolution…
RR Lyrae stars are excellent tracers of stellar populations for old, metal-poor components in the Milky Way Galaxy and the Local Group. Their luminosities have a metallicity-dependence, but determining spectroscopic [Fe/H] metallicities for…
We have revisited the problem of metallicity prediction of RR Lyrae stars from their near-infrared light curves in the Cousins I waveband. Our study is based on high-quality time-series photometry and state-of-the-art high-resolution…
We present a new observation of satellite galaxies around seven Milky Way (MW)-like galaxies located outside of the Local Group (LG) using Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam imaging data to statistically address the missing satellite problem. We…
We present a catalogue of 285 RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) in the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph), obtained by combining data from a number of different surveys including the second data release (DR2) of the European Space Agency (ESA)…
We discuss a sample of over 3000 candidate RR Lyrae stars selected by various methods using Sloan Digital Sky Survey data for about 1000 deg^2 of sky. These stars probe the halo structure out to ~100 kpc from the Galactic center. Their…
We used V and I CCD photometry to search for low-surface brightness dwarf galaxies (LSBD) in the central (<0.5 h^-1 Mpc) region of the groups NGC 6868, NGC 5846, HCG 42 and the poor cluster IC 4765. Using the parameters given by the…
RR Lyrae stars may be the best practical tracers of Galactic halo (sub-)structure and kinematics. The PanSTARRS1 (PS1) $3\pi$ survey offers multi-band, multi-epoch, precise photometry across much of the sky, but a robust identification of…
We present a sample of ~5,000 RR Lyrae stars selected from the recalibrated LINEAR dataset and detected at heliocentric distances between 5 kpc and 30 kpc over ~8,000 deg^2 of sky. The coordinates and light curve properties, such as period…
Willman 1 is a small low surface-brightness object identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and tentatively classified as a very low luminosity dSph galaxy. Further study has supported this classification while hinting that it may be…
RR Lyrae stars have long been considered unequivocal tracers of old (>10 Gyr) and metal-poor ($\mathrm{[Fe/H]}<-0.5$) stellar populations. First, because these populations are where they are readily found and because, according to canonical…