Related papers: Disk Galaxies and Galaxy Disks
We discuss recent observations of stars located close to the symmetry plane of the Milky Way, and examine them in the context of theories of Galaxy formation and evolution. The kinematics, ages, and compositions of thin disk stars in the…
We present a new set of multi-million particle SPH simulations of the formation of disk dominated galaxies in a cosmological context. Some of these galaxies are higher resolution versions of the models already described in Governato et al…
Thick disks are faint and extended stellar components found around several disk galaxies including our Milky Way. The Milky Way thick disk, the only one studied in detail, contains mostly old disk stars (~10 Gyr), so that thick disks are…
Disk galaxies evolve over time through processes that may rearrange both the radial mass profile and the metallicity distribution within the disk. This review of such slow changes is largely, though not entirely, restricted to…
Thick disks appear to be common in external large spiral galaxies and our own Milky Way also hosts one. The existence of a thick disk is possibly directly linked to the formation history of the host galaxy and if its properties is known it…
Precession is a very common phenomenon for small-scale astronomical objects. However, the precession of galactic disks, occurring on a scale larger than kilo-parsec, has barely been studied in the literature. Quantifying this precession in…
We give here the Table of Contents of the proceedings from the workshop "Red Giants as Probes of the Structure and Evolution of the Milky Way", held in Roma, 15-17 November 2010. Exciting results are blooming, thanks to a convergence…
In this review, we present a brief description of observational efforts to understand the Galactic thick disk and its relation to the other Galactic components. This review primarily focused on elemental abundance patterns of the thick disk…
Spiral galaxies offer a unique opportunity to study the role of star formation in galaxy evolution and to test various theoretical star formation schemes. I review some recent relevant work on the evolution of spiral galaxies. Detailed…
Cosmic dust plays a vital role in stellar and galactic formation and evolution, but its three-dimensional structure in the Milky Way has remained unclear due to insufficient precise reddening and distance measurements. Although early…
In July/August last year, a group of 50 galactic astronomers convened at Dunk Island, Australia to celebrate Prof. Ken Freeman's 60th birthday. The overarching theme of the meeting reflected Ken's wish to understand ``the chain of events…
Our understanding of the Milky Way disk is rapidly improving with the recent advent of the high quality and vast amount of observational data. We summarize our current view of the structure of the Milky Way disk, such as the masses and…
We discuss the main ingredients necessary to build models of chemical evolution of spiral galaxies and in particular the Milky Way galaxy. These ingredients include: the star formation rate, the initial mass function, the stellar yields and…
Global star formation is the key to understanding galaxy disk formation. This in turn depends on gravitational instability of disks and continuing gas accretion as well as minor merging. A key component is feedback from supernovae. Primary…
Deep photometric surveys of the Milky Way have revealed diffuse structures encircling our Galaxy far beyond the "classical" limits of the stellar disk. This paper reviews results from our own and other observational programs, which together…
One the most cited papers in astronomy is Ken Freeman's 1970 paper on exponential disks in galaxies. In this contribution I review what has been done in this area since then and what we can infer about systematic properties of disks in…
We examine the chemical and dynamical structure in the solar neighbourhood of a model Galaxy that is the endpoint of a simulation of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way in the presence of radial mixing of stars and gas. Although the…
Galaxy disks evolve through angular momentum transfers between sub-components, like gas, stars, or dark matter halos, through non axi-symmetric instabilities. The speed of this evolution is boosted in presence of a large fraction of cold…
Despite having entered the era of "precision cosmology," the formation of galaxies within the favored CDM cosmological paradigm remains problematic. By relating our N-body/smooth particle hydro-dynamical simulation to an extensive range of…
How do we bridge the gap between the Galactic and the extragalactic? By focusing on the topic of stellar dynamics and stellar populations of the Milky Way and its siblings this virtual meeting aimed at connecting both fields that each bring…