Related papers: Dynamical Masses for a Complete Census of Local Dw…
The history of stellar seismology suggests that observation and theory often take turns advancing our understanding. The recent tripling of the sample of pulsating white dwarfs generated by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey represents a giant…
Microlensing of distant stars in the Milky Way by the nearby high proper motion stars offers a direct way to precisely measure the masses of single lower main sequence stars and brown dwarfs.
Weak lensing provides a direct measure of the distribution of mass in the universe, and is therefore a uniquely powerful probe of dark matter. Weak lensing can also be used to measure the twin phenomenon of dark energy, via its effect upon…
Opening up a new window of millimeter-wave observations that span frequency bands in the range of 30 to 500 GHz, survey half the sky, and are both an order of magnitude deeper (about 0.5 uK-arcmin) and of higher-resolution (about 10…
High resolution spectroscopy of the lowest-mass stars and brown dwarfs reveals their origins, multiplicity, compositions and physical properties, with implications for the star formation and chemical evolution history of the Milky Way. We…
We discuss the quality of kinematic data in dwarf spheroidal galaxies, the current interpretations of those data, and prospects for actually deriving the mass profile in these galaxies. We then discuss stellar populations constraints on…
White dwarf planetary science is a rapidly growing field of research featuring a diverse set of observations and theoretical explorations. Giant planets, minor planets, and debris discs have all been detected orbiting white dwarfs. The…
Precise measurements of the fundamental properties of low-mass stars and brown dwarfs are key to understanding the physics underlying their formation and evolution. While there has been great progress over the last decade in studying the…
Advances on the formation and survival of the so-called Tidal Dwarf Galaxies (TDGs) are reviewed. The understanding on how objects of the mass of dwarf galaxies may form in debris of galactic collisions has recently benefited from the…
Dwarf satellite galaxies are a key probe of dark matter and of galaxy formation on small scales and of the dark matter halo masses of their central galaxies. They have very low surface brightness, which makes it difficult to identify and…
We explore the motivation behind large stellar surveys in Galactic astronomy, in particular, surveys that measure the photometric, phase space and abundance properties of thousands or millions of stars. These observations are essential to…
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…
Over the past century, major advances in astronomy and astrophysics have been largely driven by improvements in instrumentation and data collection. With the amassing of high quality data from new telescopes, and especially with the advent…
Astrometric observations of resolved binaries provide estimates of orbital periods and will eventually lead to measurement of dynamical masses. Only a few very low mass star and brown dwarf masses have been measured to date, and the…
The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dFGRS) has already measured over 220,000 redshifts of nearby (z ~0.1) galaxies. It allows us to estimate fundamental cosmological parameters and to subdivide the survey into subsets according to the galaxy…
At present, dwarf spheroidal galaxies satellites of the Milky Way may represent the best astrophysical objects for dark matter (DM) searches with gamma-ray telescopes. They present the highest mass-to-light ratios known in the Universe.…
The next generation of spectroscopic surveys will have a wealth of photometric data available for use in target selection. Selecting the best targets is likely to be one of the most important hurdles in making these spectroscopic campaigns…
Galaxy redshift surveys using optical telescopes have, in combination with other cosmological probes, enabled precision measurements of the nature of dark energy. We show that radio telescopes are rapidly becoming competitive with optical…
Planned astronomical observatories of the 2020s will be capable of obtaining reflected light photometry and spectroscopy of cool extrasolar giant planets. Here we explain that such data are valuable both for understanding the origin and…
M31, our closest neighboring galaxy, is a stepping stone to studies of stellar evolution, star formation, galaxy evolution, and cosmology. However, due to the difficulties of performing photometry in such crowded fields and the lack of wide…