Related papers: Dynamical streams in the local stellar halo
We present a sample of 1148 ab-type RR Lyrae (RRLab) variables identified from Catalina Surveys Data Release 1, combined with SDSS DR8 and LAMOST DR4 spectral data. We firstly use a large sample of 860 Galactic halo RRLab stars and derive…
Halo stars orbit within the potential of the Milky Way and hence their kinematics can be used to understand the underlying mass distribution. However, the inferred mass distribution depends sensitively upon assumptions made on the density…
We construct a large set of dynamical models of the galactic bulge, bar and inner disk using the Made-to-Measure method. Our models are constrained to match the red clump giant density from a combination of the VVV, UKIDSS and 2MASS…
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…
The dark matter halo of the Milky Way is expected to be triaxial and filled with substructure. It is hoped that streams or shells of stars produced by tidal disruption of stellar systems will provide precise measures of the gravitational…
The cold dark matter picture predicts an abundance of substructure within the Galactic halo. However, most substructures host no stars and can only be detected indirectly. Stellar streams present a promising probe of this dark substructure.…
(abridged) We present a spectroscopic analysis of five stellar streams (`A', `B', `Cr', `Cp' and `D') as well as the extended star cluster, EC4, which lies within streamC, all discovered in the halo of M31 from our CFHT/MegaCam survey.…
The stellar halo of the Milky Way contains the remnants of past accretion events, which could be detectable as substructures in the classical integrals of motion space, such as energy and angular momentum (E-Lz). However, our galaxy also…
We measure the three components of velocity dispersion, $\sigma_{R},\sigma_{\theta},\sigma_{\phi}$, for stars within 6 < R < 30 kpc of the Milky Way using a new radial velocity sample from the MMT telescope. We combine our measurements with…
The local stellar halo of the Milky Way contains the debris from several past accretion events. Here we study in detail the structure and properties of nearby debris associated with the Helmi streams, originally identified as an overdensity…
Stellar streams are sensitive tracers of the gravitational potential, which is typically assumed to be static in the inner Galaxy. However, massive mergers like Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus can impart torques on the stellar disk of the Milky Way…
The Ophiuchus stellar stream presents a dynamical puzzle: its old stellar populations ($\sim 12$ Gyr) cannot be reconciled with (1) its orbit in a simple model for the Milky Way potential and (2) its short angular extent, both of which…
We use the very high resolution, fully cosmological simulations from the Aquarius project, coupled to a semi-analytical model of galaxy formation, to study the phase-space distribution of halo stars in "solar neighbourhood"-like volumes. We…
We derive new constraints on the mass of the Milky Way's dark matter halo, based on a set of halo stars from SDSS as kinematic tracers. Our sample comprises 2401 rigorously selected Blue Horizontal-Branch (BHB) halo stars drawn from SDSS…
We present new gas flow models for the Milky Way inside the solar circle. To this end we use SPH simulations in gravitational potentials determined from the NIR luminosity distribution (including spiral arms) which are based on the…
Stellar streams produced from dwarf galaxies provide direct evidence of the hierarchical formation of the Milky Way. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of the "LMS-1" stellar stream, that we detect by searching for wide streams…
We analyze the kinematics of thick disk and halo stars observed by the Large sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope. We have constructed a sample of 7,993 F, G and K nearby main-sequence stars (\textit{d} $<$ 2 kpc) with…
Narrow stellar streams in the Milky Way halo are uniquely sensitive to dark-matter subhalos, but many of these subhalos may be tidally disrupted. I calculate the interaction between stellar and dark-matter streams using analytical and…
With the use of a detailed Milky Way nonaxisymmetric potential, observationally and dynamically constrained, the effects of the bar and the spiral arms in the Galaxy are studied in the disc and in the stellar halo. Especially the trapping…
In the early universe, substantial relative "stream" velocities between the gas and dark matter arise due to radiation pressure and persist after recombination. To asses the impact of these velocities on high-redshift structure formation,…