Related papers: Exploring the Galaxy using space probes
Near-future surveys promise a dramatic improvement in the number and precision of astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic measurements of stars in the Milky Way's disk. We examine the impact of such surveys on our understanding of the…
Based on the most complete sample of Galactic open star clusters up to 1.8 kpc, we performed statistical analysis of the distribution of open cluster parameters in order to understand the Galactic structure. The geometrical characteristics…
The sky distribution of Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) has been intensively studied by various groups for more than two decades. Most of these studies test the isotropy of GRBs based on their sky number density distribution. In this work we…
In this paper, we present a holistic view of the detection, characterization, and origin of stellar streams in the disk of a simulated Milky Way-like galaxy. The star-by-star simulation of the Galaxy evolves stars born in clusters in a…
Interstellar travel in the Milky Way is commonly thought to be a long and dangerous enterprise, but are all galaxies so hazardous? I introduce the concept of galactic traversability to address this question. Stellar populations are one…
We analyze the properties of searches devoted to finding planetary transits by observing simple stellar systems, such as globular clusters, open clusters, and the Galactic bulge. We develop the analytic tools necessary to predict the number…
Nearly a century after the true nature of galaxies as distant "island universes" was established, their origin and evolution remain great unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. One of the most promising ways to investigate galaxy…
The spatial distribution of compact dark matter in our Galaxy can be determined in a few years of monitoring Galactic globular clusters for microlensing. Globular clusters are the only dense fields of stars distributed throughout the…
We combine inferred galaxy properties from a semi-analytic galaxy evolution model incorporating dark matter halo merger trees with new estimates of supernova and gamma ray burst rates as a function of metallicity from stellar population…
We present a review of recent studies of the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, in particular based on large samples of non-kinematically selected stars with available proper motions. The Milky Way is argued to be a reasonable…
At the turn of the decade we arguably move from the era of precision cosmology to the era of galaxy formation. One approach to this problem will be via the construction of comprehensive galaxy samples. In this review I take the opportunity…
Since chemical abundances are inherited between generations of stars, we use them to trace the evolutionary history of our Galaxy. We present a robust methodology for creating a phylogenetic tree, a biological tool used for centuries to…
The dwarf galaxy companions to the Milky Way are unique cosmological laboratories. With luminosities as low as 10^-7 L_MW, they inhabit the lowest mass dark matter halos known to host stars and are presently the most direct tracers of the…
Previously, planets have been detected only in the Milky Way galaxy. Here, we show that quasar microlensing provides a means to probe extragalactic planets in the lens galaxy, by studying the microlensing properties of emission close to the…
A major goal of computational astrophysics is to simulate the Milky Way Galaxy with sufficient resolution down to individual stars. However, the scaling fails due to some small-scale, short-timescale phenomena, such as supernova explosions.…
(Abridged) We discuss the design considerations of the EXPLORE (EXtra-solar PLanet Occultation REsearch) project, a series of transiting planet searches using 4-m-class telescopes to continuously monitor a single field of stars in the…
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…
I present an overview of the science goals and achievements of ongoing spectroscopic surveys of individual stars in the nearby Universe. I include a brief discussion of the development of the field of Galactic Archaeology - using the fossil…
Searching for transits provides a very promising technique for finding close-in extra-solar planets. Transiting planets present the advantage of allowing one to determine physical properties such as mass and radius unambiguously. The…
We perform an extensive review of the numerous studies and methods used to determine the total mass of the Milky Way. We group the various methods into seven broad classes, including: i) estimating Galactic escape velocity using high…