Related papers: Truncations in stellar disks
In the third Galactic quadrant (180 < l < 270) of the Milky Way, the Galactic thin disk exhibits a significant warp ---shown both by gas and young stars--- bending down a few kpc below the formal Galactic plane (b=0). This warp shows its…
CONTEXT. The maximum size of the Galactic stellar disk is not yet known. Some studies have suggested an abrupt drop-off of the stellar density of the disk at Galactocentric distances $R\gtrsim 15$ kpc, which means that in practice no disk…
The analysis of the chemical composition of galaxies provides fundamental insights into their evolution. This holds true also in the case of the outer regions of spiral galaxies. This Chapter presents the observational data, accumulated in…
When present, extended disks of neutral hydrogen around spiral galaxies show a remarkably uniform velocity dispersion of approx 6 km/s. Since stellar winds and supernovae are largely absent in such regions, neither the magnitude nor the…
We present 21-cm HI line and optical R-band observations for a sample of 26 edge-on galaxies. The HI observations were obtained with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, and are part of the WHISP database (Westerbork HI Survey of…
The formation of disk galaxies is one of the most outstanding problems in modern astrophysics and cosmology. We review the progress made by numerical simulations carried out on large parallel supercomputers. Recent progress stems from a…
We investigate the stellar structure of massive, quiescent galaxies at z~2, based on Hubble Space Telescope/WFC3 imaging from the Early Release Science program. Our sample of 14 galaxies has stellar masses of M* > 10^{10.8} Msol and…
Recent observations have shown that most of the warps in the disk galaxies are asymmetric. However there exists no generic mechanism to generate these asymmetries in warps. We have shown that a rich variety of possible asymmetries in the…
Conditions for the fragmentation of expanding shells due to gravitational instability are discussed. The self-similar analytical solution is compared with the results of 3-dimensional computer simulations for the expansion into homogeneous…
The opacity of spiral galaxy disks, from counts of distant galaxies, is compared to HI column densities. The opacity measurements are calibrated using the ``Synthetic Field Method'' from Gonzalez et al (1998) and Holwerda et al. (2005a).…
We present self-consistent models of gas in optically-thick dusty disks and calculate its thermal, density and chemical structure. The models focus on an accurate treatment of the upper layers where line emission originates, and at radii…
We analyse a high-resolution, fully cosmological, hydrodynamical disc galaxy simulation, to study the source of the double-exponential light profiles seen in many stellar discs, and the effects of stellar radial migration upon the…
The stellar metallicity gradients of disc galaxies provide information on the disc assembly, star formation processes and chemical evolution. They also might store information on dynamical processes which could affect the distribution of…
We present a measurement of the age distribution of stars residing in spiral disks and dwarf galaxies. We derive a complete star formation history of the ~140 Mpc^3 covered by the volume-limited sample of galaxies in the Advanced Camera for…
We use numerical simulations of circumplanetary disks to determine the boundary between disks that are radially truncated by the tidal potential, and those where gas escapes the Hill sphere. We consider a model problem, in which a coplanar…
Present-day disc galaxies often exhibit distinct thin and thick discs. The formation mechanisms of the two discs and the timing of their onset remain open questions. To address these questions, we select edge-on galaxies from flagship JWST…
We highlight some results from our detailed abundance analysis study of 703 kinematically selected F and G dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood. The analysis is based on spectra of high-resolution (R=45000 to 110000) and high…
We use a suite of numerical simulations to investigate the mechanisms and effects of radial migration of stars in disk galaxies like the Milky Way (MW). An isolated, collisionless stellar disk with a MW-like scale-height shows only the…
Major mergers or/and the repeated minor mergers lead to dynamical heating of disks of galaxies. We analyze the available data on the velocity dispersion of stellar disks of S-S0 galaxies, including the new observational data obtained at 6m…
We use high-quality optical rotation curves of 9 low-luminosity disk galaxies to obtain the velocity profile of the surrounding dark matter halos. We find that they increase linearly with radius at least out to the stellar disk edge,…