Related papers: Determining the galactic mass distribution using t…
Tidal streams of globular clusters are ideal tracers of the Galactic gravitational potential. Compared to the few known, complex and diffuse dwarf-galaxy streams, they are kinematically cold, have thin morphologies and are abundant in the…
Tidal debris streams from galaxy satellites can provide insight into the dark matter distribution in halos. This is because we have more information about stars in a debris structure than about a purely random population of stars: we know…
Using the example of the tidal stream of the Milky Way globular cluster Palomar 5 (Pal 5), we demonstrate how observational data on streams can be efficiently reduced in dimensionality and modeled in a Bayesian framework. Our approach…
During the past 20 years, numerous stellar streams have been discovered in both the Milky Way and the Local Group. These streams have been tidally torn from orbiting systems, which suggests that most of them should roughly trace the orbit…
We describe a technique that finds orbits through the Galaxy that are consistent with measurements of a tidal stream, taking into account the extent that tidal streams do not precisely delineate orbits. We show that if accurate…
We present a new method for determining the Galactic gravitational potential based on forward modeling of tidal stellar streams. We use this method to test the performance of smooth and static analytic potentials in representing realistic…
The Gaia mission has provided precise astrometry and spectrophotometry for billions of stars in the Milky Way, enabling the identification and kinematic characterization of stellar streams. These streams, remnants of disrupted globular…
Thin stellar streams originating from globular clusters are among the most sensitive tracers of low-mass dark-matter subhalos. Joint analysis of the entire population of stellar streams will place the most robust constraints on the…
The mass distribution in the Galaxy is determined by dynamical and photometric methods. Rotation curves are the major tool for determining the dynamical mass distribution in the Milky Way and spiral galaxies. The photometric (statistical)…
We discuss recent observational and numerical work on tidal tails in globular clusters. Evidence of tidal tails has now been found in 16 Galactic globulars and 4 globulars in M31. Simulations indicate that mapping of these tidal tails over…
Stellar streams provide unique probes of galactic potentials, with the longer streams normally providing the cleaner measurements. In this paper, we show an example of a short tidal stream that is particularly sensitive to the shape of the…
Large-field multi-color images of 20 galactic globular clusters are used to investigate the presence of tidal tails around these stellar systems. Field and cluster stars are sorted with the help of color-magnitude diagrams, and star-count…
We present the results of fitting a flexible stellar stream density model to a collection of thirteen streams around the Milky Way, using photometric data from DES, DECaLS, and Pan-STARRS. We construct density maps for each stream and…
Extended halo tidal streams from disrupting Milky Way satellites offer new opportunities for gauging fundamental Galactic parameters without challenging observations of the Galactic center. In the roughly spherical Galactic potential tidal…
Dynamically cold stellar streams from tidally dissolved globular clusters (GCs) serve as excellent tools to measure the Galactic mass distribution and show promise to probe the nature of dark matter. For successful application of these…
Stars that escape globular clusters form tidal tails that are predominantly shaped by the global distribution of mass in the Galaxy, but also preserve a historical record of small-scale perturbations. Using deep $grz$ photometry from…
We develop statistical methods for identifying star streams in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy that exploit observed spatial and radial velocity distributions. Within a great circle, departures of the observed spatial distribution from…
The dark matter halo of the Milky Way is expected to be triaxial and filled with substructure. It is hoped that streams or shells of stars produced by tidal disruption of stellar systems will provide precise measures of the gravitational…
We explore whether stellar tidal streams can provide information on the secular, cosmological evolution of the Milky Way's gravitational potential and on the presence of subhalos. We carry out long-term (~t_hubble) N-body simulations of…
Stellar streams are key players in many aspects of Milky Way studies and, in particular, studying their orbital dynamics is crucial for furthering our understanding of the Milky Way's gravitational potential. Although this is not a trivial…