Related papers: Detecting Thin Stellar Streams in External Galaxie…
Simulations are run with and without a normal cold dark matter sub-halo population below 4x10^8 M_sun to examine the role of the lower mass sub-halos in the creation of density variations, "gaps", within thin tidal star streams. Dense star…
The mid-infrared provides a unique view of galaxy stellar populations, sensitive to both the integrated light of old, low-mass stars and to individual dusty mass-losing stars. We present results from an extended Spitzer/IRAC survey of M31…
The diffuse light within galaxy groups and clusters provides valuable insight into the growth of massive cosmic structures. Groups are particularly interesting in this context, because they represent the link between galactic haloes and…
Flat rotation curves v(r) are naturally explained by elongated (prolate) Dark Matter (DM) distributions, and we have provided competitive fits to the SPARC database. To further probe the geometry of the halo one needs out-of-plane…
The starlight coming from the intergalactic space in galaxy clusters and groups witnesses the violent tidal interactions that galaxies experience in these dense environments. Such interactions may be (at least partly) responsible for the…
One way to constrain the evolutionary histories of galaxies is to analyse their stellar populations. In the local Universe, our understanding of the stellar population properties of galaxies has traditionally relied on the study of optical…
Luminous stars in background galaxies straddling the lensing caustic of a foreground galaxy cluster can be individually detected due to extreme magnification factors of $\sim 10^2$--$10^3$, as recently observed in deep HST images. We…
We present the results of a study of the globular cluster systems of 6 massive spiral galaxies, originally cataloged as low surface brightness galaxies but here shown to span a wide range of central surface brightness values, including two…
We present a comparison of high-resolution, integrated-light, detailed chemical abundances for Galactic and extragalactic globular clusters in both massive galaxies and dwarf galaxies. We include measurements of Fe, Ca, Si, Na, and Al for…
The outer light (stellar halos) of massive galaxies has recently emerged as a possible low scatter tracer of dark matter halo mass. To test the robustness of outer light measurements across different data sets, we compare the surface…
We have designed a powerful new algorithm to detect stellar streams in an automated and systematic way. The algorithm, which we call the STREAMFINDER, is well suited for finding dynamically cold and thin stream structures that may lie along…
[Abridged] Within the hierarchical framework for galaxy formation, minor merging and tidal interactions are expected to shape all large galaxies to the present day. As a consequence, most seemingly normal disk galaxies should be surrounded…
Globular cluster (GC) streams, debris of stars that tidally stripped from their progenitor GCs, have densities that correlate positively with the GC mass loss rate. In this work, we employ a novel particle spray algorithm that can…
Globular clusters (GCs) are often used to estimate the dark matter content of galaxies, especially dwarfs, where other kinematic tracers are lacking. These estimates typically assume spherical symmetry and dynamical equilibrium, assumptions…
Massive galaxy clusters undergo strong evolution from z~1.6 to z~0.5, with overdense environments at high-z characterized by abundant dust-obscured star formation and stellar mass growth which rapidly give way to widespread quenching. Data…
One of the most promising tracers of the Galactic potential in the halo region are stellar streams. However, individual stream fits can be limited by systematic biases. To study these individual stream systematics, we fit streams in Milky…
Tidal stellar shells and streams are two of the most intriguing low-surface-brightness features within galaxies, consisting of stars accreted from satellite galaxies. A crucial ingredient in determining which type of feature will be formed…
The spatial distribution of compact dark matter in our Galaxy can be determined in a few years of monitoring Galactic globular clusters for microlensing. Globular clusters are the only dense fields of stars distributed throughout the…
Simulations of tidal streams show that close encounters with dark matter subhalos induce density gaps and distortions in on-sky path along the streams. Accordingly, observing disrupted streams in the Galactic halo would substantiate the…
Integrated light (IL) spectroscopy enables studies of stellar populations beyond the Milky Way and its nearest satellites. In this paper, I will review how IL spectroscopy reveals essential information about globular clusters and the…