Related papers: The Milky Way as a Key to Structural Evolution in …
This review summarises the invited presentation I gave on the Milky Way disc. The idea underneath was to touch those topics that can be considered hot nowadays in the Galactic disk research: the reality of the thick disk, the spiral…
The stellar populations of the stellar halo and of the thick disk of the Milky Way reveal much about the merging history that our Galaxy, a typical large disk galaxy, has experienced. Our current understanding, described here, implies a…
The observed gas dynamics in the Milky Way can only be explained by a bar in the galactic center. Such a bar is directly visible in the near-IR maps of the bulge, where it causes a distinctive asymmetric light distribution pattern. Another…
We study the role of radial migration of stars on the chemical evolution of the Milky Way disk. In particular, we are interested in the impact of that process on the local properties of the disk (age-metallicity relation and its dispersion,…
We use N-body chemo-dynamic simulations to study the coupling between morphology, kinematics and metallicity of the bar/bulge region of our Galaxy. We make qualitative comparisons of our results with available observations and find very…
The generation of spiral arms and the mechanisms controlling their properties within a realistic cosmological framework - the complete understanding is still beyond our grasp. Using a statistically significant sample of Milky Way- and…
Like many galaxies of its size, the Milky Way is a disk with prominent spiral arms rooted in a central bar, although our knowledge of its structure and origin is incomplete. Traditional attempts to understand the Galaxy's morphology assume…
The formation of the Milky Way is discussed within the context of the cold dark matter scenario. Several problems arise which can be solved if the Galaxy experienced an early phase of gas heating and decoupling from the dark matter…
Previous studies have shown that disk warps can result from galaxy mergers. Recent research indicates a noticeable decline in the rotation curve (RC) of the Milky Way (MW), suggesting the need for a new low-mass model to describe its…
Studies of stellar populations, understood to mean collections of stars with common spatial, kinematic, chemical, and/or age distributions, have been reinvigorated during the last decade by the advent of large-area sky surveys such as SDSS,…
The Milky Way's neutral hydrogen (HI) disk is warped and flared. However, a dearth of accurate HI-based distances has thus far prevented the development of an accurate Galactic disk model. Moreover, the extent to which our Galaxy's stellar…
We use N-body/hydrodynamic simulations to study the evolution of the spin of a Milky Way-like galaxy through interactions. We perform a controlled experiment of co-planner galaxy-galaxy encounters and study the evolution of disk spins of…
It has been thought for many years that the Milky Way is an overly large spiral galaxy. Using Cephied distances to 17 spiral galaxies we calculate the true linear diameters of those galaxies. These diameters are then compared to that of the…
In the center of the Milky Way, as well as in many other galaxies, a compact star cluster around a very massive black hole is observed. One of the possible explanations for the formation of such Nuclear Star Clusters is based on the…
We report the first robust measurement of the Milky Way star formation history using the imprint left on chemical abundances of long-lived stars. The formation of the Galactic thick disc occurs during an intense star formation phase between…
Magnetic fields in the Milky Way are present on a wide variety of sizes and strengths, influencing many processes in the Galactic ecosystem such as star formation, gas dynamics, jets, and evolution of supernova remnants or pulsar wind…
In this work we introduce the curvature of a galaxy brightness profile to identify its structural subcomponents in a non-parametrically fashion. Bulges, bars, disks, lens, rings and spiral arms are key to understand the formation and…
Due to its proximity, the Milky Way nuclear star cluster provides us with a wealth of data not available in other galactic nuclei. In particular, with adaptive optics, we can observe the detailed properties of individual stars, which can…
Galactic winds constitute a primary feedback process in the ecology and evolution of galaxies. They are ubiquitously observed and exhibit a rich phenomenology, whose origin is actively investigated both theoretically and observationally.…
Spiral galaxies comprise three major structural components; thin discs, thick discs, and central bulges. Relative dominance of these components is known to correlate with the total mass of the galaxy, and produces a remarkable morphological…