Related papers: Stellar Accelerations and the Galactic Gravitation…
In a cosmological setting, the disc of a galaxy is expected to continuously experience gravitational torques and perturbations from a variety of sources, which can cause the disc to wobble, flare and warp. Specifically, the study of…
Peculiar velocities change the expansion rate of any observer moving relative to the smooth Hubble flow. As a result, observers in a galaxy like our Milky Way can experience accelerated expansion within a globally decelerating universe,…
We measure the three components of velocity dispersion, $\sigma_{R},\sigma_{\theta},\sigma_{\phi}$, for stars within 6 < R < 30 kpc of the Milky Way using a new radial velocity sample from the MMT telescope. We combine our measurements with…
Peculiar velocities are the motions of galaxies due to the gravitational influence of large-scale structure, and thus are an important cosmological probe of the underlying matter density field. In recent years the number of surveys designed…
High-accuracy astrometry permits the determination of not only stellar tangential motion, but also the component along the line-of-sight. Such non-spectroscopic (i.e. astrometric) radial velocities are independent of stellar atmospheric…
We present 3D velocity measurements and acceleration limits for stars within a few parsec of the Galactic Center (GC) black hole, Sgr A*, based on observations of 43 and 86 GHz circumstellar maser emission. Observations were taken with the…
From a sample of 15651 RR Lyrae with accurate proper motions in Gaia DR2, we measure the azimuthally averaged kinematics of the inner stellar halo between 1.5 kpc and 20 kpc from the Galactic centre. We find that their kinematics are…
In the past several years high resolution kinematic data sets from Milky Way satellite galaxies have confirmed earlier indications that these systems are dark matter dominated objects. Further understanding of what these galaxies reveal…
The standard method of measuring the galaxy pairwise velocity dispersion on small scales is heavily weighted by the densest regions in a way that is difficult to calibrate. We propose a new statistic which measures the small-scale velocity…
Galaxy mergers lead to the formation of massive black hole binaries which can accelerate background stars close to the speed of light. We estimate the comoving density of ejected stars with a peculiar velocity in excess of $0.1c$ or $0.5c$…
An accurate knowledge of the dark matter distribution in the Milky Way is of crucial importance for galaxy formation studies and current searches for particle dark matter. In this paper we set new dynamical constraints on the Galactic dark…
The discrepancy between the mass of galaxies and their rotational velocity is one of the most puzzling scientific phenomena. Despite over a century of research, this phenomenon is not fully understood. Common explanations include dark…
During some gravitational lensing events, the lens transits the face of the star. This causes a shift in the apparent radial velocity of the star which is proportional to its rotation speed. It also changes the magnification relative to…
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment has measured the stellar velocities of red giant stars in the inner Milky Way. We confirm that the line of sight velocity distributions (LOSVDs) in the mid-plane exhibit a second…
The nature of our Milky Way Galaxy is reexamined from an eclectic point of view. Evidence for a central bar, for example, is not reflected in the distribution of RR Lyrae variables in the central bulge [4,5], and it is not clear if either a…
We have carried out a study of the velocity dispersion of the stars in the outskirts of the globular cluster Omega Centauri, finding that the velocity dispersion remains constant at large radii rather than decrease monotonically. The…
Modified gravity theories may provide an alternative to dark energy to explain cosmic acceleration. We argue that the observational program developed to test dark energy needs to be augmented to capture new tests of gravity on astrophysical…
The Milky Way disc presents a warp, a flare, lopsidedness and other deviations from a purely axisymmetrical double exponential density component, both for the stellar and the gas component. Moreover, recent large-scale extended kinematics…
The properties of dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way (MW) are useful for testing models of the formation of our Galaxy, and by extension various theories of cosmology. Recent efforts to measure the masses of the MW's satellite dwarf…
In order to test the reliability of determinations of the shapes of galaxies' dark matter halos, we have made such measurements for the Milky Way by two independent methods, which make use of the stellar kinematics in the solar…