Related papers: Dynamics of the Galactic Bulge using Planetary Neb…
Self-consistent N-body simulations are efficient tools to study galactic dynamics. However, using them to study individual trajectories (or ensembles) in detail can be challenging. Such orbital studies are important to shed light on global…
In view of their nature, planetary nebulae have very short lifetimes, and the chemical abundances derived so far have a natural bias favoring younger objects. In this work, we report physical parameters and abundances for a sample of old…
Numerical simulations have shown that the X-shaped structure in the Milky Way bulge can naturally arise from the bar instability and buckling instability. To understand the influence of the buckling amplitude on the morphology of the…
Structural decomposition of galaxies into bulge, disk, and bar components is important to address a number of scientific problems. Measuring bulge, disk, and bar structural parameters will set constraints on the violent and secular…
Planetary nebulae have been used as tracers of light and kinematics for the stellar populations in early-type galaxies since more than twenty years. Several empirical properties have surfaced: for example the invariant bright cut-off of the…
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with the Schechter characteristic luminosity $L_*$, thus an important anchor point of the Hubble sequence of all spiral galaxies. Yet the true appearance of the Milky Way has remained elusive for centuries.…
It has recently been discovered that the Galactic bulge is X-shaped, with the two southern arms of the X both crossing the lines of sight at l=0 and |b|>4, hence producing a double red clump (RC) in the bulge CMD. Dynamical models predict…
Using $N$-body simulations we study the buckling instability in a galactic bar forming in a Milky Way-like galaxy. The galaxy is initially composed of an axisymmetric, exponential stellar disk embedded in a spherical dark matter halo. The…
These lectures are intended to provide an introduction to the rich interplay between N-body simulations and stellar-kinematic observations of galaxies. The first section describes the kinematic properties of galaxies that are accessible to…
It is widely believed that central star binarity plays an important role in the formation and evolution of aspherical planetary nebulae, however observational support for this hypothesis is lacking. Here, we present the most recent results…
Major-axis long-slit stellar kinematics was obtained for 30 edge-on spiral galaxies, 24 with a boxy/peanut-shaped (B/PS) bulge. B/PS bulges are present in >45% of highly inclined systems and much work suggests that they are the edge-on…
We model the formation of a bar plus box/peanut bulge (BP bulge) component in a Milky Way-like disc galaxy using simulations of isolated multi-component systems that evolve from equilibrium initial conditions. The simulations are designed…
In order to establish an objective framework for studying galaxy morphology, we have developed a quantitative two-parameter description of galactic structure that maps closely on to Hubble's original tuning fork. Any galaxy can be placed in…
In order to perform a detailed study of the stellar kinematics in the vertical axis of bars, we obtained high signal-to-noise spectra along the major and minor axes of the bars in a sample of 14 face-on galaxies, and used them to determine…
We explore the chemodynamical properties of the Galaxy in the azimuthal velocity $V_\phi$ and metallicity [Fe/H] space using red giant stars from Gaia Data Release 3. The row-normalized $V_\phi$-[Fe/H] maps form a coherent sequence from the…
We track the angular momentum transfer in n-body simulations of barred galaxies by measuring torques to understand the dynamical mechanisms responsible for the evolution of the bar-disc-dark matter halo system. We find evidence for three…
We present multi-component decomposition of high-quality $R$-band images of 312 disk galaxies from the Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. In addition to bulges and disks, we successfully model nuclei, bars, disk breaks, nuclear/inner lenses,…
Studying the composition and origin of the inner region of our Galaxy -- the "Galactic bulge" -- is crucial for understanding the formation and evolution of the Milky Way and other galaxies. We present new observational constraints based on…
We present first results of a program to study the dynamics of undisturbed bulgeless, low surface density disk galaxies in order to probe the underlying structure of dark matter halos. High resolution H-alpha rotation curves are combined…
We present a dynamical analysis of 673 galactic Planetary Nebulae, using a two-integral axisymmetric model with a Kuzmin-Kutuzov St\"{a}ckel potential. The method fits the kinematics to the projected moments of a distribution function, by…