Related papers: Accretion Onto the Milky Way: The Smith Cloud
Many of the Milky Way's globular clusters are likely accreted from satellite galaxies that have long since merged with the Milky Way. When these globular clusters are susceptible to tidal disruption, this process likely starts already…
As the Milky Way and its satellite system become more entrenched in near field cosmology efforts, the need for an accurate mass estimate of the Milky Way's dark matter halo is increasingly critical. With the second and early third data…
Recent measurements suggest that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) may weigh as much as 25\% of the Milky Way. In this work we explore how such a large satellite affects mass estimates of the Milky Way based on equilibrium modelling of the…
We present a steady-state analytical model for pressure-regulated formation of molecular clouds (MC) and stars (SF) in gaseous galactic disks and apply it to the Milky Way (MW). MC formation depends on midplane interstellar pressure…
Galactic halos are known to grow hierarchically, inside out. This implies a correlation between the infall lookback time of satellites and their binding energy. Cosmological simulations predict a linear relation between the infall lookback…
Almost all spiral galaxies have been observed to have flattening rotation curves. The new Gaia DR3 released data shows a Milky Way sharply Keplerian declining rotation curve, starting at $\sim 16$ kpc and ending at 26.5 kpc. The data…
We use the clump giants of the disk as standard candles calibrated from Hipparcos parallaxes in order to map their distribution with two new near-IR surveys of the Galactic plane: UKIDSS-GPS and VVV. We explore different selection cuts of…
We analyse the structure of the local stellar halo of the Milky Way using $\sim$ 60000 stars with full phase space coordinates extracted from the SDSS--{\it Gaia} catalogue. We display stars in action space as a function of metallicity in a…
We analyse the stellar distributions on the [Fe/H]-[Mg/Fe] plane for 11 Milky Way-mass galaxies from the FIRE-2 cosmological baryonic zoom-in simulations. Alpha-element bimodality, in the form of two separate sequences on the [Fe/H]-[Mg/Fe]…
We have compiled a large sample of isolated central galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which do not have a neighbour of comparable brightness within a projected distance of 1 Mpc. We use the colours, luminosities and surface…
A wealth of recent observational studies shows the dark matter in the Milky Way to have the following fundamental properties: 1) there is no detectable dark matter associated with the Galactic disk -- the dark matter is distributed in a…
Supermassive black holes in galaxy centres can grow by the accretion of gas, liberating energy that might regulate star formation on galaxy-wide scales. The nature of the gaseous fuel reservoirs that power black hole growth is nevertheless…
Using Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer and Hubble Space Telescope observations of the QSO PG1259+593, we detect D I Lyman-series absorption in high velocity cloud Complex C, a low-metallicity gas cloud falling onto the Milky Way. This…
Evidence for the accretion of material in spiral galaxies has grown over the past years and clear signatures can be found in HI observations of galaxies. We describe here new detailed and sensitive HI synthesis observations of a few nearby…
We know that our Galaxy is permeated by tenuous, hot, metal-rich gas. However much remains unknown about its origin, the portion of the Galaxy that it permeates, its total mass, as any role it may play in regulating activity in the Galaxy.…
I review recent observations of molecular gas in the halo of the Milky Way and in the Magellanic Clouds. Far-ultraviolet absorption line studies of molecular hydrogen (H_2) with ORFEUS and FUSE have unveiled the presence of a diffuse…
Recent observations from the ESA Gaia satellite and with the ESO VLT, have identified the presence of a population of young, 0.5 to 2 Gyr old, stars in the halo and in dwarf spheroidal galaxies surrounding the Milky Way. It suggests that MW…
We study the vertical stellar distribution of the Milky Way thin disk in detail with particular focus on the outer disk. We treat the galactic disk as a gravitationally coupled, three-component system consisting of stars, atomic hydrogen…
We study how structural properties of globular clusters and dwarf galaxies are linked to their orbits in the Milky Way halo. From the inner to the outer halo, orbital energy increases and stellar-systems gradually move out of internal…
Theory and observations agree that the accreted stellar halos (ASHs) of Milky Way-like galaxies display significant scatter. I take advantage of this stochasticity to invert the link between halo assembly history (HAH) and ASH, using mock…