Related papers: The heavy-elements heritage of the falling sky
We report evidence from APOGEE for the presence of a new metal-poor stellar structure located within $\sim$4~kpc of the Galactic centre. Characterised by a chemical composition resembling those of low mass satellites of the Milky Way, this…
Context: The accretion history of the Milky Way is still unknown, despite the recent discovery of stellar systems that stand out in terms of their energy-angular momentum space, such as Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage. In particular, it is still…
There is increasing observational and theoretical evidence for a correlation between the metallicity and the mass of the stellar halo for galaxies with Milky Way-like stellar masses. Using the Illustris cosmological hydrodynamical…
The formation of our Milky Way can be parsed qualitatively into different phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar populations: the halo and the disk components. Revealing a quantitative overall picture of the Galactic…
We find that the relative contribution of satellite galaxies accreted at high redshift to the stellar population of the Milky Way's smooth halo increases with distance, becoming observable relative to the classical smooth halo about 15 kpc…
Given the massive spectroscopic surveys and the Gaia mission, the Milky Way has turned into a unique laboratory to be explored using abundance ratios that show a strong dependency with time. Within this framework, the data provided through…
We present chemical abundance measurements of three stars in the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Horologium I, a Milky Way satellite discovered by the Dark Energy Survey. Using high resolution spectroscopic observations we measure the metallicity…
We explore the elemental abundance features of metal-rich disk stars, highlighting the comparisons made with those of the recently revealed Galactic bulge stars. A similarity between two of the comparisons leads to a new theoretical picture…
Recent observations suggest that abundance pattern differences exist between low metallicity stars in the Milky Way stellar halo and those in the dwarf satellite galaxies. This paper takes a first look at what role the early environment for…
Gas flows play a fundamental role in galaxy formation and evolution, providing the fuel for the star formation process. These mechanisms leave an imprint in the amount of heavy elements. Thus, the analysis of this metallicity signature…
The imprints of stellar nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of the galaxy can be seen in different stellar populations, with older generation stars showing higher $\alpha$-element abundances while the later generations becoming enriched…
Abundance observations indicate the presence of rapid-neutron capture (i.e., r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations demonstrate that the earliest generations of stars in the Galaxy,…
The study of the Milky Way stellar discs in the context of galaxy formation is discussed. In particular we explore the properties of the Milky Way disc using a new sample of about 550 dwarf stars for which we have recently obtained…
The kinematics of the most metal-poor stars provide a window into the early formation and accretion history of the Milky Way. Here, we use 5~high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations ($\sim~5\times10^6$ star particles) of Milky…
We study the enrichment histories for nine elements, C, four alpha-elements of Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti, Sc, and three iron-peak elements of Co, Ni, and Zn, by using a large number of stellar data, collected by the Stellar Abundances for Galactic…
We present a study of the chemical abundances of Solar neighbourhood stars associated to dynamical structures in the Milky Way's (thick) disk. These stars were identified as overdensity in the eccentricity range 0.3< ecc < 0.5 in the…
The fastest moving stars provide insight into several fundamental properties of the Galaxy, including the escape velocity as a function of Galactocentric radius, the total mass, and the nature and frequency of stellar encounters with the…
New information on the relations between the Galactic disks, the halo, and satellite galaxies is being obtained from elemental abundances of stars having metallicities in the range -1.5 < [Fe/H] < -0.5. The first results for a sample of 26…
Ultrafaint dwarf galaxies ($M_\star\lesssim10^{5-6}\,{\rm M}_\odot$) are relics of an early phase of galaxy formation. They contain some of the oldest and most metal-poor stars in the Universe which likely formed before the epoch of…
The Milky Way halo was predominantly formed by the merging of numerous progenitor galaxies. However, our knowledge of this process is still incomplete, especially in regard to the total number of mergers, their global dynamical properties…