Related papers: Mass Assembly and Chemical Complexity in the Milky…
ALMA will be able to detect a broad spectrum of molecular lines in galaxies. Current aperture synthesis observations indicate that the molecular line emission from galaxies is remarkably variable, even on kpc scales. Imaging spectroscopy at…
Quasar absorption lines provide detailed information on the chemical, kinematic, and ionization conditions in galaxies and their environments, and provide a means for studying the evolution of these conditions back to the epoch of the first…
Submillimetre molecular lines (e.g., CO, HCN, SiO) provide a uniquely powerful view of the physical and chemical processes that govern star formation (SF) and galaxy evolution. Yet, our current picture of the molecular universe beyond the…
The chemical abundances in the atmosphere of a star provide unique information about the gas from which that star formed, and, modulo processes that are not important for the vast majority of stars, such as mass transfer in close binary…
Stellar halos of galaxies retain crucial clues to their mass assembly history. It is in these galactic components that the remains of cannibalised galactic building blocks are deposited. For the case of the Milky Way, the opportunity to…
The dense molecular gas is the ideal tracer of the spiral structure in the Milky Way, and should be used intensively to solve the puzzle of its structure. In spite of our position inside the plane, we can hope to disentangle the structures,…
Studying our Galaxy, the Milky Way (MW), gives us a close-up view of the interplay between cosmology, dark matter, and galaxy formation. In the next decade our understanding of the MW's dynamics, stellar populations, and structure will…
HI observations in the 21cm line have been a principal tool for investigating the large-scale structure of the Milky Way. This review considers what was learned in the first decade after the discovery of the 21cm line, and how that…
Using our rich observations within the Milky Way to better understand galaxy evolution requires understanding what the Milky Way looks like "as a galaxy" -- that is, its "true" shape and abundance profiles (unskewed by observational…
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…
The history of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way Galaxy is found in the spatial distribution, kinematics, age and chemical abundance distributions of long-lived stars. From this fossil record one can in principle extract the star…
Both simulations and observations suggest that the disk assembly of galaxies is governed by the interplay between coplanar gas inflow, ex-planar gas outflow and in-situ star formation on the disk, known as the leaky accretion disk. This…
Our Milky Way Galaxy is a typical large spiral galaxy, representative of the most common morphological type in the local Universe. We can determine the properties of individual stars in unusual detail, and use the characteristics of the…
In this article we discuss the importance of high-resolution absorption spectroscopy for our understanding of the distribution and physical nature of the gaseous circumgalactic medium (CGM) that surrounds the Milky Way. Observational and…
Massive star-forming regions exhibit a rich chemistry with complex gas distributions, especially on small scales. While surveys have yielded constraints on typical gas conditions, they often have coarse spatial resolution and limited…
The structural parameters of a galaxy can be used to gain insight into its formation and evolution history. In this paper, we strive to compare the Milky Way's structural parameters to other, primarily edge-on, spiral galaxies in order to…
Invited Review at IAU Symp 164 on Stellar Populations. The Milky Way Galaxy offers a unique opportunity for testing theories of galaxy formation and evolution. The study of the spatial distribution, kinematics and chemical abundances of…
The outskirts of galaxies offer extreme environments where we can test our understanding of the formation, evolution, and destruction of molecules and their relationship with star formation and galaxy evolution. We review the basic…
I discuss how the chemical abundance distributions, kinematics and age distributions of stars in the thin and thick disks of the Galaxy can be used to decipher the merger history of the Milky Way, a typical large galaxy. The observational…
Filamentary structure is important for the ISM and star formation. Galactic distribution of filaments may regulate the star formation rate in the Milky Way. However, interstellar filaments are intrinsically complex, making it difficult to…