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Related papers: What is Missing from the Local Stellar Halo?

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We summarize evidence that the halo of the Milky Way comprises two different, and broadly overlapping, stellar components. The two structures exhibit different chemical compositions, spatial distributions, and kinematics. These results were…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-23 Daniela Carollo , Timothy C. Beers

The stellar halo of the Milky Way records the history of its interactions with dwarf galaxies, whose subsequent destruction results in the formation of an extended stellar component. Recent works have suggested that galaxies with masses…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-05-10 Sownak Bose , Alis J. Deason

We present the design for HALO7D-X, a survey of the stellar halo to investigate the accretion history of the Milky Way. The survey will use a combination of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Gaia data for sky position and proper motions of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-08 Miranda Apfel , Kevin A. McKinnon , Constance M. Rockosi , Puragra Guhathakurta , Kathryn V. Johnston

The Milky Way halo is one of the few galactic haloes that provides a unique insight into galaxy formation by resolved stellar populations. Here, we present a catalogue of $\sim$47 million halo stars selected independent of parallax and…

Stellar haloes form through the disruption of satellite galaxies over time, making them a promising observable for constraining galaxy merger histories. We use a dynamical decomposition technique to isolate the stellar haloes of Milky…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-09-03 Katy L. Proctor , Aaron D. Ludlow , Claudia del P. Lagos , Aaron S. G. Robotham

We present six simulations of galactic stellar haloes formed by the tidal disruption of accreted dwarf galaxies in a fully cosmological setting. Our model is based on the Aquarius project, a suite of high resolution N-body simulations of…

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-25 Bojun Tao , Hong-Xin Zhang , Wenting Wang , Enci Wang , Guangwen Chen , Huiyuan Wang , Lijun Chen , Qian-Hui Chen , Song Huang , Xu Kong , Yu Rong

Modern Galactic surveys have revealed an ancient merger that dominates the stellar halo of our Galaxy (\textit{Gaia}-Sausage-Enceladus, GSE). Using chemical abundances and kinematics from the H3 Survey, we identify 5559 halo stars from this…

We use extensive gravity-sensitive DDO 51 photometry over 5100 square degrees, combined with SDSS broadband photometry, to select a catalog of $\sim 4,000$ giant stars covering a large fraction of the high Galactic latitude sky and reaching…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-12-14 Colin T. Slater , David L. Nidever , Jeffrey A. Munn , Eric F. Bell , Steven R. Majewski

We study numerical simulations of satellite galaxy disruption in a potential resembling that of the Milky Way. Our goal is to assess whether a merger origin for the stellar halo would leave observable fossil structure in the phase-space…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 Amina Helmi , Simon D. M. White

Observations of the Milky Way's stellar halo find that it is predominantly comprised of a radially biased population of stars, dubbed the Gaia Sausage--Enceladus, or GSE. These stars are thought to be debris from dwarf galaxy accretion…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-04-08 Dylan Folsom , Mariangela Lisanti , Lina Necib , Danny Horta , Mark Vogelsberger , Lars Hernquist

Our 'home galaxy' - the Milky Way - is a fairly large spiral galaxy, prototype of the most common morphological class in the local Universe. Although being only a galaxy, it is the only one that can be studied in unique detail: for the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-04 Gabriella De Lucia

To place the highly substructured stellar halos of the Milky Way and M31 in a larger context of hierarchical galaxy formation, it is necessary to understand the prevalence and properties of tidal substructure around external galaxies. This…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-03-23 Jeffrey L. Carlin , Rachael L. Beaton , David Martinez-Delgado , R. Jay Gabany

We investigate the formation of the stellar halos of four simulated disk galaxies using high resolution, cosmological SPH + N-Body simulations. These simulations include a self-consistent treatment of all the major physical processes…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2009-08-24 Adi Zolotov , Beth Willman , Alyson M. Brooks , Fabio Governato , Chris B. Brook , David W. Hogg , Tom Quinn , Greg Stinson

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…

A simple model for the Milky Way halo is presented. It has a flat rotation curve in the inner regions, but the density falls off sharply beyond an outer edge. This truncated, flat rotation curve (TF) model possesses a rich family of simple…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 M. I. Wilkinson , N. W. Evans

We address the problem of identifying remnants of satellite galaxies in the halo of our galaxy with Gaia data. The remnants have to be extracted from a very large data set (of order 10^9 stars) in the presence of observational errors and…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-11 Anthony Brown , Hector Velazquez , Luis Aguilar , ;

We examine the HI content and environment of all of the Local Group dwarf galaxies (M_tot < 10^10 M_solar), including the numerous newly discovered satellites of the Milky Way and M31. All of the new dwarfs, with the exception of Leo T,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-06-02 Jana Grcevich , Mary E Putman

The hierarchical model of galaxy formation predicts that the Milky Way halo is populated by tidal debris of dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. Due to long dynamical times, debris from the lowest mass objects remains coherent as thin and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-05-31 Ana Bonaca , Adrian M. Price-Whelan