Related papers: The Milky Way as a Key to Structural Evolution in …
Essentially everything of astronomical interest is either part of a galaxy, or from a galaxy, or otherwise relevant to the origin or evolution of galaxies. Diverse examples are that the isotropic composition of meteorites provides clues to…
A suite of vast stellar surveys mapping the Milky Way, culminating in the Gaia mission, is revolutionizing the empirical information about the distribution and properties of stars in the Galactic stellar disk. We review and lay out what…
Gravitational interactions and mergers are shaping and reshaping galaxies throughout the observable universe. While observations of interacting galaxies at low redshifts yield detailed information about the processes at work, observations…
Complete catalogs of molecular clouds in the Milky Way allow analysis of the molecular medium and the star formation properties of the Milky Way that closely follows the method used for nearby galaxies. We explore whether the big dip in the…
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…
The morphology and kinematics of the spiral structure of the Milky Way is a long-standing problem in astrophysics. In this review we firstly summarize various methods with different tracers used to solve this puzzle. The astrometry of…
The study of the Milky Way structure is vital importance for a better understanding of the universe. This study digs deeper into the structure of Milky Way Galaxys with emphasis to its spiral arms. Multiple data sources were sought…
The Galactic bulge, that is the prominent out-of-plane over-density present in the inner few kiloparsecs of the Galaxy, is a complex structure, as the morphology, kinematics, chemistry and ages of its stars indicate. To understand the…
The Milky Way's bar dominates the orbits of stars and the flow of cold gas in the inner Galaxy, and is therefore of major importance for Milky Way dynamical studies in the Gaia era. Here we discuss the pronounced peanut shape of the…
Galaxies, in particular disc galaxies, contain a number of structures and substructures with well defined morphological, photometric and kinematic properties. Considerable theoretical effort has been put into explaining their formation and…
Secular evolution gradually shapes galaxies by internal processes, in contrast to early cosmological evolution which is more rapid. An important driver of secular evolution is the flow of gas from the disk into the central regions, often…
We illustrate the formation and evolution of the Milky Way over cosmic time, utilizing a sample of 10 million red giant stars with full chemodynamical information, including metallicities and $\alpha$-abundances from low-resolution Gaia XP…
We summarize evidence that the halo of the Milky Way comprises two different, and broadly overlapping, stellar components. The two structures exhibit different chemical compositions, spatial distributions, and kinematics. These results were…
Understanding how the large-scale kinematics of the MW shape the formation and evolution of the interstellar medium remains challenging from an observational perspective, and numerical models that can reproduce the observed structure and…
A key event in the history of the Milky Way is the formation of the bar. This event affects the subsequent structural and dynamical evolution of the entire Galaxy. When the bar formed, gas was likely rapidly funnelled to the centre of the…
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…
In this review I will discuss the comparison between model results and observational data for the Milky Way, the predictive power of such models as well as their limits. Such a comparison, known as Galactic archaeology, allows us to impose…
Lopsidedness is common in disk galaxies, yet its origin and evolution remain unclear. Previous studies typically examined stellar and gas asymmetries separately, but a combined analysis offers a stronger probe of the mechanisms driving…
New constraints on the Milky Way's bar parameters are derived from the gaseous spiral structure within the Galactic bar, and in particular from the identification of the dustlanes leading the bar major axis.
Evidence from a variety of sources points towards the existence of a bar in the central few kpc of the Galaxy. The measurements roughly agree on the direction of the bar major axis, but other parameters (axis ratio, size, pattern speed) are…