Related papers: What Does the Milky Way Look Like?
Our Galaxy - the Milky Way - has certain features of the structure and evolution. The morphological, photometric, kinematic, and chemodynamical properties are usually considered in the search for the Milky Way galaxies-analogues (MWAs). The…
The Milky Way has a barred bulge. This article summarizes the current understanding of the main structural parameters and pattern speed of the bar, and compares predicted values for the microlensing optical depth with the bulge microlensing…
The Galactic global magnetic field is thought to play a vital role in shaping Galactic structures such as spiral arms and giant molecular clouds. However, our knowledge of magnetic field structures in the Galactic plane at different…
Using star counts in both color and magnitude from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) Second Incremental Release Point Source Catalog we search for evidence of non-uniform extinction and stellar population density changes in the Galactic…
In recent years, massive new spectroscopic data sets, such as the over half million stellar spectra obtained during the course of SDSS (in particular its sub-survey SEGUE), have provided the quantitative detail required to formulate a…
Stars and their kinematics provide one of the tools available for studies of the shapes of galaxies and their halos. In this review I focus on two specific applications: the shape of the Milky Way dark halo and the shape of the LMC disk.…
Modern astrometric and spectroscopic surveys have revealed a wealth of structure in the phase space of stars in the Milky Way, with evidence of resonance features and non-equilibrium processes. Using Gaia's third data release, we present…
The size of a galaxy is one of the fundamental parameters that reflects its growth and assembly history. Traditionally, the size of the Milky Way has been characterized by the scale length of the disk, based on the assumption of an…
The spiral structure of the Milky Way is not conclusive, even for the disc regions in the solar neighbourhood. Especially, the arm-like structures uncovered from the over-density maps of evolved stars are inconsistent with the commonly…
We present K'(2.1 micron) observations of four nearby flocculent spirals, which clearly show low-level spiral structure and suggest that kiloparsec-scale spiral structure is more prevalent in flocculent spirals than previously supposed. In…
Since the mid 70ies it is known that the dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way are arranged in a thin, polar structure. The arrangement and motion within this structure has been identified as a severe challenge to the standard model of…
Combining HI data from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey~(CGPS) and CO data from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting (MWISP) project, we have identified a new segment of a spiral arm between Galactocentric radii of 15 and 19~kpc that…
We analyze the spatial orientation of a homogenous sample of 440 elongated Planetary Nebulae (PNe) in order to determine the orientation of their apparent major axis respect to the Milky Way plane. We present some important geometrical and…
We use the clump giants of the disk as standard candles calibrated from Hipparcos parallaxes in order to map their distribution with two new near-IR surveys of the Galactic plane: UKIDSS-GPS and VVV. We explore different selection cuts of…
The halo of the Milky Way provides unique elemental abundance and kinematic information on the first objects to form in the Universe, which can be used to tightly constrain models of galaxy formation and evolution. Although the halo was…
Absolute proper motions for six new globular clusters have recently been determined. This motivated us to obtain the Galactic orbits of these six clusters both in an axisymmetric Galactic potential and in a barred potential, such as the one…
We are using the VLBA and the Japanese VERA project to measure trigonometric parallaxes and proper motions of masers found in high-mass star-forming regions across the Milky Way. Early results from 18 sources locate several spiral arms. The…
Using the cross-matched data of Gaia EDR3 and the 2MASS Point Source Catalog, a sample of RC stars with parallax accuracies better than 20% is identified and used to reveal the nearby spiral pattern traced by old stars. As shown in the…
Studying star formation in spiral arms tells us not only about the evolution of star formation, and molecular clouds, but can also tell us about the nature of spiral structure in galaxies. I will address both these topics using the results…
With the aim of studying the nonlinear stellar and gaseous response to the gravitational potential of a galaxy such as the Milky Way, we have modeled 3D galactic spiral arms as a superposition of inhomogeneous oblate spheroids and added…