Related papers: Kinematically Detected Halo Streams
Galaxy haloes contain fundamental clues about the galaxy formation and evolution process: hierarchical cosmological models predict haloes to be ubiquitous, and to be (at least in part) the product of past merger and/or accretion events. The…
The $\Lambda$CDM cosmological scenario predicts that our Galaxy should contain hundreds of stellar streams at the solar vicinity, fossil relics of the merging history of the Milky Way and more generally of the hierarchical growth of…
The present day chemical and dynamical properties of the Milky Way bear the imprint of the Galaxy's formation and evolutionary history. One of the most enduring and critical debates surrounding Galactic evolution is that regarding the…
If the Galaxy formed hierarchically through the accretion of smaller satellite galaxies we might hope to find signatures of this in the halo's phase-space distribution. I review theoretical ideas about what form these signatures should…
Recent observational and theoretical work suggests that the formation of the Galactic stellar halo involved both dissipative processes and the accretion of subfragments. With present data, the fraction of the halo for which an accretion…
The kinematics of satellite galaxies moving in a dark matter halo are a direct probe of the underlying gravitational potential. Thus, the phase-space distributions of satellites represent a powerful tool to determine the galaxy-halo…
Gaia DR2 has delivered full-sky 6-D measurements for millions of stars, and the quest to understand the dynamics of our Galaxy has entered a new phase. Our aim is to reveal and characterize the kinematic sub-structure of the different…
The kinematics of the stellar halo hold important clues to the assembly history and mass distribution of the Galaxy. In this study, we map the kinematics of stars across the Galactic halo with the H3 Survey. We find a complex distribution…
Our Galaxy is a complex machine in which several processes operate simultaneously: metal-poor gas is accreted, is chemically enriched by dying stars, and then drifts inwards, surrendering its angular momentum to stars; new stars are formed…
The phase-space structure of our Galaxy holds the key to understand and reconstruct its formation. The Lambda-CDM model predicts a richly structured phase-space distribution of dark matter and (halo) stars, consisting of streams of…
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…
Studies of the HI in galaxies have clearly shown that subtle details of the HI distribution and kinematics often harbour key information for understanding the structure and evolution of galaxies. Evidence for the accretion of material has…
Our Galaxy is thought to have undergone an active evolutionary history dominated by star formation, the accretion of cold gas, and, in particular, mergers up to 10 gigayear ago. The stellar halo reveals rich fossil evidence of these…
Galactic halo gas traces inflowing star formation fuel and feedback from a galaxy's disk and is therefore crucial to our understanding of galaxy evolution. In this review, we summarize the multi-wavelength observational properties and…
In this contribution we discuss the expected properties of our halo if our Galaxy had been built from mergers of smaller systems. Using both analytic arguments and high-resolution simulations, we find that the Galactic halo in the Solar…
If the favored hierarchical cosmological model is correct, then the Milky Way system should have accreted ~100-200 luminous satellite galaxies in the past \~12 Gyr. We model this process using a hybrid semi-analytic plus N-body approach…
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 dynamical and virial mass of the Milky Way galaxy is estimated using latest high precision stellar halo and dwarf galaxy satellite kinematics. The new data suggest the Galaxy is a highly compact, classically thermalized object.…
Modern theories of galaxy formation predict that the Galactic stellar halo was hierarchically assembled from the accretion and disruption of smaller systems. This hierarchical assembly is expected to produce a high degree of structure in…
Recent years have seen the discovery of an ever growing number of stellar debris streams and clouds. These structures are typically detected as extended and often curvilinear overdensities of metal-poor stars that stand out from the…