Related papers: Halos of Spiral Galaxies. III. Metallicity Distrib…
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, we have resolved individual red-giant branch stars in the halos of eight nearby spiral galaxies. The fields lie at projected distances between 2 and 13 kpc along the galaxies' minor axes. The data set…
We present an analysis of the metallicity distribution functions of fields projected along the minor axis for a sample of inclined spiral galaxies in order to search for evidence of the presence of multiple stellar populations. In all…
The stellar halos of spiral galaxies bear important chemo-dynamical signatures of galaxy formation. We present here the analysis of 89 semi-cosmological spiral galaxy simulations, spanning ~ 4 magnitudes in total galactic luminosity. These…
The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to obtain WFPC2 (V,I) photometry for a sample of 10,000 red giant stars in the outer halo of the giant elliptical NGC 5128. Comparison with the fiducial RGBs of Milky Way globular clusters and model…
We study the stellar halo color properties of six nearby massive highly inclined disk galaxies using Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide Field Camera 3 observations in both F606W and F814W filters from the GHOSTS…
The Galactic stellar halo is predicted to have formed at least partially from the tidal disruption of accreted dwarf galaxies. This assembly history should be detectable in the orbital and chemical properties of stars. The H3 Survey is…
We explore the stellar metallicity distribution function of the Galactic halo based on SDSS ugriz photometry. A set of stellar isochrones is calibrated using observations of several star clusters and validated by comparisons with…
We present a high precision photometric view of the stellar populations in the outer halo of M31, using data taken with the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (HST/ACS). We analyse the field populations adjacent to 11…
We present a comprehensive study of the chemical properties of the stellar haloes of Milky-Way mass galaxies, analysing the transition between the inner to the outer haloes. We find the transition radius between the relative dominance of…
In integrated-light, some color-color diagrams that use optical and near-infrared photometry show surprisingly orthogonal grids as age and metallicity are varied, and they are coming into common usage for estimating the average age and…
We present the results of deep I and V-band photometry of the halo stars near the southeast minor axis of the Local Group spiral galaxy M33. An (I,V-I) color-magnitude diagram distinctly reveals the red giant branch stars at the bright end…
We study the chemical evolution and formation of the Galactic halo through the analysis of its stellar metallicity distribution function and some key elemental abundance patterns. Starting from the two-infall model for the Galaxy, which…
We present the resolved stellar populations in the inner and outer halo of the nearby lenticular galaxy NGC~3115. Using deep HST observations, we analyze stars two magnitudes fainter than the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB). We study…
We fit an Extended Distribution Function (EDF) to K giants in the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) survey. These stars are detected to radii ~80 kpc and span a wide range in [Fe/H]. Our EDF, which depends…
A possible relation between the high dispersion in metallicity of metal-poor halo stars and the minor merger processes in the history of the Galaxy is presented. The foreign populations of stars in the satellites through minor merger…
[Abridged] Motivated by upcoming data from astrometric and spectroscopic surveys of the Galaxy, we explore the chemical abundance properties and phase-space distributions in hierarchically-formed stellar halo simulations set in a LambdaCDM…
(Abridged) We investigate optical and near-IR color gradients in a sample of 172 low-inclination galaxies spanning Hubble types S0--Irr. The colors are compared to stellar population synthesis models from which luminosity-weighted average…
The stellar halos of galaxies encode their accretion histories. In particular, the median metallicity of a halo is determined primarily by the mass of the most massive accreted object. We use hydrodynamical cosmological simulations from the…
Stellar halos are the only major stellar component of disk galaxies that lack systematic observational characterization, yet they encode critical information about galaxy merger histories. We present the first systematic census of stellar…
Galaxies are thought to grow through accretion; as less massive galaxies are disrupted and merge over time, their debris results in diffuse, clumpy stellar halos enveloping the central galaxy. Here we present a study of the variation in the…