Related papers: The Local Group
The Local Group is a unique environment in which to study the astrophysics of galaxy formation. The proximity of the Milky Way and M31 enhances the frequency of interactions of the low-mass halo population with more massive dark matter…
When interpreted within the standard framework of Newtonian gravity and dynamics, the kinematics of stars and gas in dwarf galaxies reveals that most of these systems are completely dominated by their dark matter halos. These dwarf galaxies…
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…
Dwarf galaxies in the local group provide a unique astrophysical laboratory. Despite their proximity some of these systems still lack a reliable distance determination as well as studies of their stellar content and star formation history.…
Microlensing and pixel-lensing surveys play a fundamental role in the searches for galactic dark matter and in the study of the galactic structure. Recent observations suggest the presence of a population of old white dwarfs with high…
Prompted by a new catalogue of M31 globular clusters, we have collected together individual metallicity values for globular clusters in the Local Group. Although we briefly describe the globular cluster systems of the individual Local Group…
Near-field cosmology -- using detailed observations of the Local Group and its environs to study wide-ranging questions in galaxy formation and dark matter physics -- has become a mature and rich field over the past decade. There are…
We distinguish between Local Group field galaxies which may have passed through the virial volume of the Milky Way, and those which have not, via a statistical compari- son against populations of dark matter haloes in the Via Lactea II…
The population of nearby dwarf galaxies in the Local Group constitutes a complete galactic environment, perfect suited for studying the connection between stellar populations and galaxy evolution. In this study, we are conducting an optical…
We suggest a new component of the Milky Way that can account for both the optical depth and event durations implied by microlensing searches targeting the Large Magellanic Cloud. This component, which represents less than 4% of the total…
The population of solitary compact objects in the Galaxy is very diffcult to investigate. In this paper we analyze the possibility of using microlensing searches to detect and to analyze the properties of the solitary black holes and…
Microlensing observations have now become a useful tool in searching for non--luminous astrophysical compact objects (brown dwarfs, faint stars, neutron stars, black holes and even planets). Originally conceived for establishing whether the…
We present a pedagogical review on the formation and evolution of galaxies in groups, utilizing observational information from the Local Group to galaxies at z~6. The majority of galaxies in the nearby universe are found in groups, and…
Dwarf galaxies in the Local Group provide a unique astrophysical laboratory. Despite their proximity some of these systems still lack a reliable distance determination as well as studies of their stellar content and star formation history.…
I present the latest results from our group about the multiple stellar populations in the old Milky Way globular clusters (GCs) and in the young systems both in the Magellanic Clouds and in the Milky Way. For the ancient GCs in our Galaxy I…
High accuracy proper motions (PMs) of M31 and other Local Group satellites have now been provided by the {\it Gaia} satellite. We revisit the Timing Argument to compute the total mass $M$ of the Local Group from the orbit of the Milky Way…
Our Galaxy is surrounded by a large family of dwarf galaxies of which the most massive are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). Recent evidence suggests that systems with the mass of the Local Group accrete galaxies in…
We review how dark matter is distributed in our local neighbourhood from an observational and theoretical perspective. We will start by describing first the dark matter halo of our own galaxy and in the Local Group. Then we proceed to…
The dwarf galaxy companions to the Milky Way are unique cosmological laboratories. With luminosities as low as 10^-7 L_MW, they inhabit the lowest mass dark matter halos known to host stars and are presently the most direct tracers of the…
The Milky Way is the product of a complex evolution of generations of mergers, collapse, star formation, supernova and collisional heating, radiative and collisional cooling, and ejected nucleosynthesis. Moreover, all of this occurs in the…