Related papers: Modelling the stellar halo with RR-Lyrae stars
We present VLT-FORS1 spectra of a sample of 34 faint 20.0 < g* < 21.1 A-type stars selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release, with the goal of measuring the velocity dispersion of blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars in…
RR Lyrae stars are useful chemical tracers thanks to the empirical relationship between their heavy-element abundance and the shape of their light curves. However, the consistent and accurate calibration of this relation across multiple…
We introduce a new technique to constrain the line-of-sight integrated electron density of our Galactic halo $\text{DM}_\text{MW,halo}$ through analysis of the observed dispersion measure distributions of pulsars $\text{DM}_\text{pulsar}$…
We report the discovery of distant RR Lyrae stars, including the most distant known in the Milky Way, using data taken in the $g-$band with the Dark Energy Camera as part of the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS; 2014 campaign). We detect…
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSphs) are prime laboratories for studying dark matter (DM) and the black hole demographics in the low-mass regime. These systems are also often flattened; nevertheless most studies rely on spherical models,…
From a sample of 15651 RR Lyrae with accurate proper motions in Gaia DR2, we measure the azimuthally averaged kinematics of the inner stellar halo between 1.5 kpc and 20 kpc from the Galactic centre. We find that their kinematics are…
We study the dynamical properties of halo stars located in the Solar Neighbourhood. Our goal is to explore how the properties of the halo depend on the selection criteria used for defining a sample of halo stars. Once this is understood we…
We study the distribution of dark matter in dwarf spheroidal galaxies by modelling the moments of their line-of-sight velocity distributions. We discuss different dark matter density profiles, both cuspy and possessing flat density cores.…
A sample of RR Lyrae (RRL) variables from the Southern Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt Object survey in regions overlapping the expected position of debris from the interaction of the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf galaxy with the Milky Way (RA ~ 20 and…
The virial theorem prescribes the ratio of the globally-averaged equatorial to vertical velocity dispersion of a tracer population in spherical and flattened dark haloes. This gives sequences of physical models in the plane of global…
Dynamical properties of two-component galaxy models whose stellar density distribution is described by a gamma-model while the total density distribution has a pure r^(-2) profile, are presented. The orbital structure of the stellar…
We present the results of a study of the average mass profile around galaxies using weak gravitational lensing. We use 45.5 deg^2 of R_C band imaging data from the Red-Sequence Cluster Survey (RCS) and define a sample of 1.2\times 10^5…
In this work we introduce a new method to perform the identification of groups of galaxies and present results of the identification of galaxy groups in the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-DR7). Our methodology…
We present the radial velocities, metallicities and the K-band magnitudes of 74 RR Lyrae stars in the inner regions of the LMC. The intermediate resolution spectra and infrared images were obtained with FORS1 at the ESO VLT and with the…
We derive a star catalogue generated from the images taken as part of the 37.5 sq. deg Millennium Galaxy Catalogue. These data, alone and together with colours gained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Early Data Release, allow the analysis…
RR Lyr stars are ideal massless tracers that can be used to study the total mass and dark matter content of the outer halo of the Milky Way. This is because they are easy to find in the light curve databases of large stellar surveys and…
Radial velocities of 2768 fundamental mode RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) toward the Southern Galactic bulge are presented, spanning the southern bulge from -8 < l < +8 and -3 < b <-6. Distances derived from the pulsation properties of the RRLs are…
Precise abundance ratios are determined for 94 dwarf stars with 5200 < Teff < 6300 K, -1.6 < [Fe/H] < -0.4, and distances D < 335 pc. Most of them have halo kinematics, but 16 thick-disk stars are included. Equivalent widths of atomic lines…
Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we develop a new monte-carlo based method to estimate the photometric metallicity distribution function (MDF) for stars in the Milky Way. Compared with other photometric calibration methods,…
We present an update of a spectroscopic follow-up survey at low-resolution of a large number of RR Lyrae halo overdensity candidates found in the southern sky. The substructure candidates were identified in the RR Lyrae catalog of Torrealba…