Related papers: The Multidimensional Milky Way
We use a series of high-resolution simulations of a `Milky-Way' halo coupled to semi-analytic methods to study the formation of our own Galaxy and of its stellar halo. The physical properties of our model Milky Way, as well as the age and…
A new view on our Galaxy has recently emerged, with large consequences on its formation scenarios. Not only new dwarf satellites have been detected, still orbiting and tidally disrupting, but also a multitude of stellar streams or tidal…
The observation of our home galaxy, the Milky Way (MW), is made difficult by our internal viewpoint. The Gaia survey that contains around 1.6 billion star distances is the new flagship of MW structure and can be combined with other…
Microlensing is now a very popular observational astronomical technique. The investigations accessible through this effect range from the dark matter problem to the search for extra-solar planets. In this review, the techniques to search…
(Sub-)millimeter spectral lines can be used not only to understand the chemical complexity and enrichment history of an observed portion of our Galaxy, but with spectrally resolved lines, they reveal the physical conditions, dynamics, and…
Hundreds of globular clusters and dwarf galaxies encircle the Milky Way. Many of these systems have undergone partial disruption due to tidal forces, littering the halo with stellar streams. These tidal tails are sensitive to the Galactic…
What the future holds for the stellar populations of the Milky Way Galaxy may (optimistically) be predicted by study of their past histories, as written in the chemical abundance distributions, angular momentum distributions, velocity…
We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the…
The dense molecular gas is the ideal tracer of the spiral structure in the Milky Way, and should be used intensively to solve the puzzle of its structure. In spite of our position inside the plane, we can hope to disentangle the structures,…
The GAIA Observatory, ESA's Cornerstone 6 mission, addresses the origin and evolution of our Galaxy, and a host of other scientific challenges. GAIA will provide unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements with the accuracies…
The infall of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) into the Milky Way's halo impacts the distribution of stars and dark matter in our Galaxy. Mapping the observational consequences of this encounter can inform us about the properties of both…
After exactly a century since the formulation of the general theory of relativity, the phenomenon of gravitational lensing is still an extremely powerful method for investigating in astrophysics and cosmology. Indeed, it is adopted to study…
The ESA cornerstone mission Gaia was successfully launched in 2013, and is now scanning the sky to accurately measure the positions and motions of about two billion point-like sources of 3<V<20.5 mag, with the main goal of reconstructing…
Cosmic surveys of large scale structure have imaged hundreds of millions of galaxies and mapped the 3D positions of over a million. Surveys starting over the next few years will increase these numbers more than tenfold. Simultaneously,…
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 dynamical and virial mass of the Milky Way galaxy is estimated using latest high precision stellar halo and dwarf galaxy satellite kinematics. The new data suggest the Galaxy is a highly compact, classically thermalized object.…
The ubiquitous presence of dark matter in the universe is today a central tenet in modern cosmology and astrophysics. Ranging from the smallest galaxies to the observable universe, the evidence for dark matter is compelling in dwarfs,…
We have made a lot of progress in the study of the MW. In spite of this, much of our Galaxy remains unknown, and amazing breakthroughs await to be made in the exploration of the far side of the Galaxy. Focussing on the Galactic extinction…
The Milky Way is made up of a central bar, a disk with embedded spiral arms, and a dark matter halo. Observational and theoretical constraints for the characteristic parameters of these components will be presented, with emphasis on the…
The star-formation histories of the main stellar components of the Milky Way constrain critical aspects of galaxy formation and evolution. I discuss recent determinations of such histories, together with their interpretation in terms of…