Related papers: Measuring the Sun's Motion with Stellar Streams
We present the primary results from the Dragonfly Edge-on Galaxies Survey (DEGS), an exploration of the stellar halos of twelve nearby ($d < 25$ Mpc) edge-on disc galaxies with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. The edge-on orientation of these…
The Gaia mission has provided precise astrometry and spectrophotometry for billions of stars in the Milky Way, enabling the identification and kinematic characterization of stellar streams. These streams, remnants of disrupted globular…
We have derived a new photographic photometry and proper motions for 20000 stars with completeness to V = 18 in the direction of galactic center at the intermediate latitude (l = 3 deg,b = 47 deg; alpha(1950)=15h 18m, delta(1950) = +02deg…
The cold dark matter picture predicts an abundance of substructure within the Galactic halo. However, most substructures host no stars and can only be detected indirectly. Stellar streams present a promising probe of this dark substructure.…
We use the kinematics of $\sim200\,000$ giant stars that lie within $\sim 1.5$ kpc of the plane to measure the vertical profile of mass density near the Sun. We find that the dark mass contained within the isodensity surface of the dark…
Our knowledge of the dynamics and masses of galaxies in the Local Group has long been limited by the fact that only line-of-sight velocities were observationally accessible. This introduces significant degeneracies in dynamical models,…
Context. Recently our ability to study stars using asteroseismic techniques has increased dramatically, largely through the use of space based photometric observations. Work has also been done using ground based spectroscopic observations…
Dark matter sub-halos that pass near or through a thin tidal star stream locally increase its velocity dispersion. Subsequent orbital evolution further increases the velocity dispersion and stream width, lowering the surface density of a…
Understanding the hydrodynamical processes and conditions at the interface between the Magellanic Stream (MS) and the Galactic halo is critical to understanding the MS and by extension, gaseous tails in other interacting galaxies. These…
In the hierarchical formation model, galaxy clusters grow by accretion of smaller groups or isolated galaxies. During the infall into the centre of a cluster, the properties of accreted galaxies change. In particular, both observations and…
We study the dynamics of faint stellar substructures around the Umbrella Galaxy, NGC 4651, which hosts a dramatic system of streams and shells formed through the tidal disruption of a nucleated dwarf elliptical galaxy. We elucidate the…
We show that space-based telescopes such as the proposed Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph will be able to detect the light scattered by the interstellar grains along lines of sight passing near stars in our Galaxy. The relative flux of…
This paper describes a new way of determining the high-latitude solar rotation rate statistically from simultaneous observations of many polar faculae. In this experiment, I extracted frames from a movie made previously from flat-fielded…
We present a new method for determining the Galactic gravitational potential based on forward modeling of tidal stellar streams. We use this method to test the performance of smooth and static analytic potentials in representing realistic…
We reanalyse the measurements of parallax, proper motion, and line-of-sight velocity for 18 masers in high mass star-forming regions presented by Reid et al. (2009). We use a likelihood analysis to investigate the distance of the Sun from…
Clues to the origins and evolution of our Galaxy can be found in the kinematics of stars around us. Remnants of accreted satellite galaxies produce over- densities in velocity-space, which can remain coherent for much longer than spatial…
Inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons produces a major component of the diffuse emission from the Galaxy. The photon fields involved are the cosmic microwave background and the interstellar radiation field from stars and…
Stellar activity remains a limiting factor in measuring precise planet parameters from radial velocity spectroscopy, not least in the search for Earth mass planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars. One approach to mitigate…
Galaxy spectra are a rich source of kinematical information since the shapes of the absorption lines reflect the movement of stars along the line-of-sight. We present a technique to directly build a dynamical model for a galaxy by fitting…
This paper presents a method for determining spacecraft angular rates using event-based camera sensing. This is achieved by analyzing the temporal distribution of brightness events triggered by the apparent motion of stars. The location and…