Related papers: Understanding the Galaxy
The Milky Way's satellites provide unique information about the density of the Galactic halo at large radii. The inclusion of even a few rather inaccurate proper motions resolves an ambiguity in older mass estimates in favour of higher…
Most of what we know about the formation of stars, and essentially everything we know about the formation of planets, comes from observations of our solar neighborhood within 2 kpc of the Sun. Before 2018, accurate distance measurements…
The Gaia mission is reviewed together with the expected contents of the final catalogue. It is then argued that the ultimate goal of Galactic structure studies with Gaia astrometry should be to build a dynamical model of our galaxy which is…
Our knowledge of the Galaxy is being revolutionised by a series of photometric, spectroscopic and astrometric surveys. Already an enormous body of data is available from completed surveys, and data of ever increasing quality and richness…
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…
Gaia DR3 opens a new era of all-sky spectral analysis of stellar populations thanks to the nearly 5.6 million stars observed by the RVS and parametrised by the GSP-spec module. The all-sky Gaia chemical cartography allows a powerful and…
In recent years, massive new spectroscopic data sets, such as the over half million stellar spectra obtained during the course of SDSS (in particular its sub-survey SEGUE), have provided the quantitative detail required to formulate a…
I review the properties of the Galaxy's stellar halo, specifically as traced by horizontal branch stars, but with reference to and in comparison with other stellar tracers. I discuss the halo density profile, the variation in horizontal…
Stellar variability studies are now reaching a completely new level thanks to ESA's Gaia mission, which enables us to locate many variable stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and determine the various instability strips/bands.…
A hot phase of the interstellar medium has now been detected and studied in several objects through its X-ray emission. A proper assessment of its characteristics is relevant for our understanding of several aspects of galaxy properties,…
Gravitational lensing has now become a popular tool to measure the mass distribution of structures in the Universe on various scales. Here we focus on the study of galaxy's scale dark matter halos with galaxy-galaxy lensing techniques:…
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the James Webb Space Telescope are transforming our understanding of galaxy formation and evolution in the early Universe. By combining their capabilities, these observatories provide…
A complete map of the 3D distribution of molecular (CO) gas was constructed using a realistic dynamical model of the gas flow in the barred potential of the Milky Way. The map shows two prominent spiral arms starting at the bar ends…
Over the past three decades the established view of a nearly homogeneuous, featureless Universe on scales larger than a few Megaparsec has been completely overhauled. In particular through the advent of ever larger galaxy redshift surveys…
Young massive stars, with their spectacular masers and HII regions, dominate our Galaxy, and are a cornerstone for understanding Galactic structure. I will highlight the role of Parkes in contributing to these studies - past, present and…
Our Galaxy - the Milky Way - has certain features of the structure and evolution. The morphological, photometric, kinematic, and chemodynamical properties are usually considered in the search for the Milky Way galaxies-analogues (MWAs). The…
The formation of galaxies can be understood in terms of the assembly patterns of each type of galactic component. To perform this kind of analysis, is necessary to define some criteria to separate those components. Decomposition methods…
We construct the first comprehensive dynamical model for the high-quality subset of stellar kinematics of the Milky Way disc, with full 6D phase-space coordinates, provided by the Gaia Data Release 2. We adopt an axisymmetric approximation…
About 25% of the optical extragalactic sky is obscured by the dust and stars of our Milky Way. Dynamically important structures might still lie hidden in this zone. Various approaches are presently being employed to uncover the galaxy…
Asteroseismology has the capability of delivering stellar properties which would otherwise be inaccessible, such as radii, masses and thus ages of stars. When this information is coupled with classical determinations of stellar parameters,…