Related papers: The Stellar Tidal Stream Survey
We use simulations of merging galaxies to explore the sensitivity of the morphology of tidal tails to variations of the halo mass distributions in the parent galaxies. Our goal is to constrain the mass of dark halos in well-known merging…
While mergers between massive galaxies and their dwarf satellites are well studied, the properties of dwarf - dwarf satellite mergers are not well constrained. Stellar streams trace satellite disruption and, in the dwarf galaxy regime, are…
Slow rotator galaxies are distinct amongst galaxy populations, with simulations suggesting that a mix of minor and major mergers are responsible for their formation. A promising path to resolve outstanding questions on the type of merger…
Extended halo tidal streams from disrupting Milky Way satellites offer new opportunities for gauging fundamental Galactic parameters without challenging observations of the Galactic center. In the roughly spherical Galactic potential tidal…
Cosmological structure formation predicts that our galactic halo contains an enormous hierarchy of substructures and streams, the remnants of the merging hierarchy that began with tiny Earth mass microhalos. If these structures persist…
We present a brief history of Galactic astrophysics, and explain the origin of halo substructure in the Galaxy. We motivate our study of tidal streams by highlighting the tight constraints that analysis of the trajectories of tidal streams…
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…
The Gaia mission promises to deliver precision astrometry at an unprecedented level, heralding a new era for discerning the kinematic and spatial coordinates of stars in our Galaxy. Here, we present a new technique for estimating the age of…
The hierarchical theory of galaxy formation rests on the idea that smaller galactic structures merge to form the galaxies that we see today. The past decade has provided remarkable observational support for this scenario, driven in part by…
In interacting galaxies, strong tidal forces disturb the global morphology of the progenitors and give birth to the long stellar, gaseous and dusty tails often observed. In addition to this destructive effect, tidal forces can morph into a…
Models for the formation and growth of structure in a cold dark matter dominated universe predict that galaxy halos should contain significant substructure. Studies of the Milky Way, however, have yet to identify the expected few hundred…
The rapidly improving quality and resolution of both low surface brightness observations and cosmological simulations of galaxies enables one to address the important question how the formation history is imprinted in the outer, unrelaxed…
(abridged) Predictions of the Concordance Cosmological Model (CCM) of the structures in the environment of large spiral galaxies are compared with observed properties of Local Group galaxies. Five new most probably irreconcilable problems…
From the $\Lambda$ cold dark matter paradigm it is expected that galaxies merge and grow in their environments. These processes form various tidal features depending on the merger mass ratio, orbital parameters, and gas richness. We…
How do galaxies move relative to one another? While we can examine the motion of dark matter subhalos around their hosts in simulations of structure formation, determining the orbits of satellites around their parent galaxies from…
We present new deep, wide-field Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) $g$ and $r$ imaging data from the Smallest Scale of Hierarchy Survey (SSH) revealing previously undetected tidal features and stellar streams in the outskirts of six dwarf…
The unique dynamics of the tidal disruption of satellite galaxies is an extremely sensitive probe of long-range interactions between dark-matter particles. Dark-matter forces that are several percent the strength of gravity will lead to…
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…
In the current concordance cosmology small halos are expected to be completely dark and can significantly perturb low-mass galaxies during minor merger interactions. These interactions may well contribute to the diversity of the dwarf…
We develop a framework for modelling the Milky Way using stellar streams and a wide range of photometric and kinematic observations. Through the use of mock data we demonstrate that a standard suite of Galactic observations leads to…