Related papers: The Milky Way's middle-aged inner ring
The Milky Way bulge-bar is composed of multiple populations. Using chemical and kinematical planes, we segregate six populations in a bulge-bar sample observed by the APOGEE survey: two with bar-driven orbits, two with eccentric orbits, and…
We present an overview of the distributions of 11 elemental abundances in the Milky Way's inner regions, as traced by APOGEE stars released as part of SDSS Data Release 14/15 (DR14/DR15), including O, Mg, Si, Ca, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Na, Al, and…
The Milky Way galaxy is observed to have multiple components with distinct properties, such as the bulge, disk, and halo. Unraveling the assembly history of these populations provides a powerful test to the theory of galaxy formation and…
While it is incontrovertible that the inner Galaxy contains a bar, its structure near the Galactic plane has remained uncertain, where extinction from intervening dust is greatest. We investigate here the Galactic bar outside the bulge, the…
(Abridged) The present-day spatial and kinematic distribution of stars in the Milky Way provides key constraints on its internal dynamics and evolutionary history. We select stars that are more metal-rich than the interstellar medium (ISM)…
Stellar abundances and ages afford the means to link chemical enrichment to galactic formation. In the Milky Way, individual element abundances show tight correlations with age, which vary in slope across ([Fe/H]-[$\alpha$/Fe]). Here, we…
Observations of the stellar content of the Milky Way's bulge helps to understand the stellar content and evolution of distant galaxies. In this brief overview I will first highlight some recent work directed towards measuring the history of…
The prevailing model of galaxy formation proposes that galaxies like the Milky Way are built through a series of mergers with smaller galaxies over time. However, the exact details of the Milky Way's assembly history remain uncertain. In…
We determined the age of the stellar content of the Galactic halo by considering main-sequence turn-off stars. From the large number of halo stars provided by Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we could accurately detect the turn-off as a function…
In the Milky Way, the distribution of stars in the $[\alpha/\mathrm{Fe}]$ vs. $[\mathrm{Fe/H}]$ and $[\mathrm{Fe/H}]$ vs. age planes holds essential information about the history of star formation, accretion, and dynamical evolution of the…
Using a sample of 69,919 red giants from the SDSS-III/APOGEE Data Release 12, we measure the distribution of stars in the [$\alpha$/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] plane and the metallicity distribution functions (MDF) across an unprecedented volume of the…
The investigation of the metal-poor tail in the Galactic bulge provides unique information on the early Milky Way assembly and evolution. A chemo-dynamical analysis of 17 very metal-poor stars (VMP, [Fe/H] $<-2.0$) selected from the…
The stellar density distribution of the bulge is analyzed through one of its tracers. We use oxygen-rich Miras variables from the Catchpole et al. (2016) survey and OGLE-III survey as standard candles. The average age of these stars is…
We investigated the habitability of the Milky Way, making use of recent observational analysis on the prevalence of Earth-sized planets, in order to estimate where and when potentially habitable star systems may have formed over the course…
We study the age and metallicity distribution function (MDF) of metal-poor stars in the Milky Way halo as a function of galactocentric radius by combining N-body simulations and semi-analytical methods. We find that the oldest stars…
Inner bars are frequent structures in the local Universe and thought to substantially influence the nuclear regions of disc galaxies. In this study we explore the structure and dynamics of inner bars by deriving maps and radial profiles of…
Investigations of the origin and evolution of the Milky Way disk have long relied on chemical and kinematic identification of its components to reconstruct our Galactic past. Difficulties in determining precise stellar ages have restricted…
Using data from the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS), we identify a population of infrared carbon (IR C) stars with J-K >= 2 in the Milky Way. These stars are shown to trace the stellar bar previously identified in IR and optical surveys.…
The DENIS/ISOGAL near/mid-IR survey of the Milky Way for the first time probes stellar populations in the innermost obscured regions of our galaxy. Ages, metallicities and extinction-corrected luminosities are derived for these stars…
We present an analysis of the structure, kinematics, and chemo-dynamical properties of the Milky Way bulge using RR Lyrae stars from OGLE, and giant stars from APOGEE and Gaia that have distances placing them in the inner Galaxy. Firstly,…