Related papers: Quantifying torque from the Milky Way bar using Ga…
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with the Schechter characteristic luminosity $L_*$, thus an important anchor point of the Hubble sequence of all spiral galaxies. Yet the true appearance of the Milky Way has remained elusive for centuries.…
A key event in the history of the Milky Way is the formation of the bar. This event affects the subsequent structural and dynamical evolution of the entire Galaxy. When the bar formed, gas was likely rapidly funnelled to the centre of the…
The relative bar torques for 45 galaxies observed at $K$- band with the 4.2m William Herschel Telescope are determined by transforming the light distributions into potentials and deriving the maximum ratios of the tangential forces relative…
The escape velocity profile of the Milky Way offers a crucial and independent measurement of its underlying mass distribution and dark matter properties. Using a sample of stars from Gaia DR3 with 6D kinematics and strict quality cuts, we…
This work verifies the principle that gravitation is caused by {\it energy} and not simply by mass alone. A model is proposed in which cosmic ray protons flow radially through the galaxy. The resulting electric field energy creates a…
The parameters of an axisymmetric model for the gravitational potential of the Galaxy have been refined. The basic curve of the Galaxy's rotation in a distance interval of $R:0-190$ kpc was constructed using the velocities of masers,…
We derive the stellar rotation curve of the Galaxy in the range of Galactocentric radii of R=4-16 kpc at different vertical heights from the Galactic plane of z between -2 and +2 kpc. We used the PPMXL survey, which contains the USNO-B1…
We use Gaia photometry and astrometry to estimate the vertical spatial structure of the Milky Way at the Solar radius, formally accounting for sample incompleteness (the selection function) and parallax measurement uncertainty. Our results…
The Milky Way spiral arms are well established from star counts as well as from the locus of molecular clouds and other young objects, however, they have only recently started to be observed from a kinematics point of view. Using the…
We compile and analyze ~200 trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of molecular masers associated with very young high-mass stars. These measurements strongly suggest that the Milky Way is a four-arm spiral. Fitting log-periodic…
We apply the vertical Jeans equation to the Milky Way disk, in order to study non-axisymmetric variations in the thin disk surface density. We divide the disk plane into area cells with a 100 pc grid spacing, and use four separate subsets…
A new method for determining the nature of the orbital motion (chaotic or regular) of globular clusters in the central region of the Galaxy with a radius of 3.5 kpc, which are most affected by the bar, is proposed. The method is based on…
Almost all spiral galaxies have been observed to have flattening rotation curves. The new Gaia DR3 released data shows a Milky Way sharply Keplerian declining rotation curve, starting at $\sim 16$ kpc and ending at 26.5 kpc. The data…
We report on the detection in the combined $Gaia$-DR1/RAVE data of a lack of disk stars in the solar neighbourhood with velocities close to zero angular momentum. We propose that this may be caused by the scattering of stars with very low…
Radial velocities of 1726 candidate B- and A-type stars within 3deg of the Galactic center (GC) were estimated from FLAMES/VLT spectra in the range of 396-457 nm. The final sample was limited to 1507 stars with either Gaia DR2 parallaxes or…
The Sun and Sun-like stars lose angular momentum to their magnetised stellar winds. This braking torque is coupled to the stellar magnetic field, such that changes in the strength and/or geometry of the field modifies the efficiency of this…
We present tilting rates for galaxies comparable to the Milky Way (MW) in a $\Lambda$ cold dark matter cosmological hydrodynamical simulation, and compare these with the predicted tilting rate detection limit of the {\it Gaia} satellite…
We present an update to the frequency analysis method for measuring the properties of a galactic bar. The method involves computing the fundamental frequencies of orbits in rotating, N-body-derived potential models, classifying the stars as…
We present an approach to measure the Milky Way (MW) potential using the angular accelerations of stars in aggregate as measured by astrometric surveys like Gaia. Accelerations directly probe the gradient of the MW potential, as opposed to…
We describe a new phenomenon of `bar damping' that may have played an important role in shaping the Milky Way bar and bulge as well as its spiral structure. We use a collisionless N-body simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy initially…