Related papers: Interpreting Debris from Satellite Disruption In E…
We propose an extension of the GC3 streamer finding method of Johnston et al. 1996 that can be applied to the future Gaia database. The original method looks for streamers along great circles in the sky, our extension adds the kinematical…
According to the hierarchical formation paradigm, galaxies form through mergers of smaller entities and massive black holes (MBHs), if lurking at their centers, migrate to the nucleus of the newly formed galaxy, where they form binary…
In the past decade, surveys of the stellar component of the Galaxy have revealed a number of streams from tidally disrupted dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. Simulations of hierarchical structure formation in LCDM cosmologies predict…
The rapid growth of satellite constellations, particularly Starlink, is increasingly affecting ground-based astronomy. In this project, we developed a workflow to detect, identify, and measure the brightness of trails from artificial…
The impact of mega-constellations of satellites in low-Earth orbit during nighttime optical observations is assessed. Orbital geometry is used to calculate the impact of stellar occultations by satellites on the photometry of individual…
Published maps of red giant stars in the halo region of M31 exhibit a giant stellar stream to the south of this galaxy, as well as a giant "shelf" to the northeast of M31's center. Using these maps, we find that there is a fainter shelf of…
Only in the Milky Way is it possible to conduct an experiment which uses stellar streams to detect low-mass dark matter subhaloes. In smooth and static host potentials, tidal tails of disrupting satellites appear highly symmetric. However,…
The number of satellites in low-Earth orbit is increasing rapidly, and many tens of thousands of them are expected to be launched in the coming years. There is a strong concern among the astronomical community about the contamination of…
If the Galaxy formed hierarchically through the accretion of smaller satellite galaxies we might hope to find signatures of this in the halo's phase-space distribution. I review theoretical ideas about what form these signatures should…
We present a new spectroscopic technique based in part on targeting the upward fluctuations of the surface brightness for studying the internal stellar kinematics and metallicities of low surface brightness galaxies and streams beyond the…
Tidal streams from existing and destroyed satellite galaxies populate the outer regions of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). This inhomogeneous debris can be studied without many of the obstacles that plague Milky Way research. We review the…
We derive the structural parameters of the recently discovered very low luminosity Milky Way satellites through a Maximum Likelihood algorithm applied to SDSS data. For each satellite, even when only a few tens of stars are available down…
Simulations of tidal streams show that close encounters with dark matter subhalos induce density gaps and distortions in on-sky path along the streams. Accordingly, observing disrupted streams in the Galactic halo would substantiate the…
In nuclei of galaxies strong tidal forces can destroy stars passing within a critical distance from the central super-massive black hole (SMBH). Observational signatures of tidal disruption events (TDEs) depend on the environment around the…
We investigate the interaction history of the M31 sub-group of galaxies by comparing surface photometry of its two nearest satellites, M32 and NGC 205, with N-body simulations of satellite destruction. The recent discovery of a giant stream…
Galaxy surveys aim to map the large-scale structure of the Universe and use redshift space distortions to constrain deviations from general relativity and probe the existence of massive neutrinos. However, the amount of information that can…
Aims. We analyze whether the effects of secular perturbations, originating from a substellar companion, on the dust dynamics in a debris disk can be investigated with spatially resolved observations. Methods. We numerically simulated the…
We examine the tidal disruption of satellite galaxies in a cosmological simulation of the formation of a disk galaxy in the $\Lambda$CDM scenario. We find that the disruption of satellite galaxies in orbits roughly coplanar with the disk…
The stellar stripping of satellites in cluster haloes is understood to play an important role in the production of intracluster light. Increasingly, cosmological simulations have been utilised to investigate its origin and assembly.…
We describe ongoing work on a new method that allows one to determine the mass and relative position (in galactocentric radius and azimuth) of galactic companions purely from analysis of observed disturbances in gas disks. Here, we…