Related papers: Halo Meteors
The measurements of the possible gravitational microlensing events are analysed with a simple yet accurate disc--halo model of the Milky Way Galaxy. This comprises a luminous exponential disc embedded in a flattened dark matter halo with…
Recent observational and theoretical work suggests that the formation of the Galactic stellar halo involved both dissipative processes and the accretion of subfragments. With present data, the fraction of the halo for which an accretion…
The halo stars on highly radial orbits should inevitably pass the center regions of the Milky Way. Under the assumption that the stellar halo is in dynamical equilibrium and axisymmetric, we integrate the orbits of $\sim 10,000$ halo…
In a framework where galaxies form hierarchically, extended stellar haloes are predicted to be an ubiquitous feature around Milky Way-like galaxies and to consist mainly of the shredded stellar component of smaller galactic systems. The…
The Milky Way's stellar halo, which extends to $>100$ kpc, encodes the evolutionary history of our Galaxy. However, most studies of the halo to date have been limited to within a few kpc of the Sun. Here, we characterize differences between…
If the favored hierarchical cosmological model is correct, then the Milky Way system should have accreted ~100-200 luminous satellite galaxies in the past \~12 Gyr. We model this process using a hybrid semi-analytic plus N-body approach…
Primordial dark matter halos are well understood from cold dark matter-only simulations. Since they can contract significantly as baryons settle into their centers, direct comparisons with observed galaxies are complicated. We present an…
The stellar halos of galaxies encode their accretion histories. In particular, the median metallicity of a halo is determined primarily by the mass of the most massive accreted object. We use hydrodynamical cosmological simulations from the…
Quantification of the Galaxy's star formation history involves both the duration and the rate of formation, with these parameters being known with different precision for different populations. The early rate of star formation is knowable…
The stellar halos of large galaxies represent a vital probe of the processes of galaxy evolution. They are the remnants of the initial bouts of star formation during the collapse of the proto-galactic cloud, coupled with imprint of ancient…
Stellar halos are the only major stellar component of disk galaxies that lack systematic observational characterization, yet they encode critical information about galaxy merger histories. We present the first systematic census of stellar…
This paper presents theoretical star formation and chemical enrichment histories for the stellar halo of the Milky Way based on new chemodynamical modeling. The goal of this study is to assess the extent to which metal-poor stars in the…
Recent dynamical analysis based on Gaia data have revealed major accretion events in Milky Way's history. Nevertheless, our understanding of the primordial Galaxy is hindered because the bona fide identification of the most metal-poor and…
The Milky Way's million degree gaseous halo contains a considerable amount of mass that, depending on its structural properties, can be a significant mass component. In order to analyze the structure of the Galactic halo, we use XMM-Newton…
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we have resolved individual red-giant branch stars in the halos of eight nearby spiral galaxies. The fields lie at projected distances between 2 and 13 kpc along the galaxies' minor axes. The data set…
We propose that collisions between neutron stars and interstellar asteroids, such as `Oumuamua, could power observable radio flares in the Milky Way galaxy. We find the rate of such events at $\sim 1 \mathrm{\; Jy}$ to be $\sim 10…
We explore the phase-space structure of nearby halo stars identified kinematically from Gaia DR2 data. We focus on their distribution in velocity and in "integrals of motion" space as well as on their photometric properties. Our sample of…
Previous studies based on the analysis of Gaia DR2 data have revealed that accreted stars, possibly originating from a single progenitor satellite, are a significant component of the halo of our Galaxy, potentially constituting most of the…
AIMS. We derive the morphology of the stellar component in the outer halo volume, and search for possible overdensities due to substructures therein. METHODS. We made use of some of the data releases of the spectroscopic survey LAMOST…
High resolution N-body simulations of galactic cold dark matter haloes indicate that we should expect to find a few satellite galaxies around the Milky Way whose haloes have a maximum circular velocity in excess of 40 kms. Yet, with the…