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Related papers: Weighing the Milky Way

200 papers

Using our rich observations within the Milky Way to better understand galaxy evolution requires understanding what the Milky Way looks like "as a galaxy" -- that is, its "true" shape and abundance profiles (unskewed by observational…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-07-24 Gail Zasowski , Julie Imig , Hayley Coluccio

We use the rotation curve from Gaia data release (DR) 3 to estimate the mass of the Milky Way. We consider an Einasto density profile to model the dark matter component. We extrapolate and obtain a dynamical mass…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-01-14 Yongjun Jiao , Francois Hammer , Haifeng Wang , Jianling Wang , Yanbin Yang

We review the recent theoretical and observational developments concerning the interaction of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) with the Milky Way and its neighbourhood. An emerging picture is that the LMC is a fairly massive companion…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-04-19 Eugene Vasiliev

The exponential scale length ($L_d$) of the Milky Way's (MW's) disk is a critical parameter for describing the global physical size of our Galaxy, important both for interpreting other Galactic measurements and helping us to understand how…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-11-08 Timothy C. Licquia , Jeffrey A. Newman

We construct a model for the Milky Way Galaxy composed of a stellar disc and bulge embedded in a dark-matter halo. All components are modelled as $N$-body systems with up to 8 billion equal-mass particles and integrated up to an age of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-10-17 Michiko S. Fujii , Jeroen Bédorf , Junichi Baba , Simon Portegies Zwart

We present and apply a method to infer the mass of the Milky Way (MW) by comparing the dynamics of MW satellites to those of model satellites in the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamics simulations. A distribution function (DF) for galactic…

Recent measurements, of the velocities of stars near the center of the Milky Way have provided the strongest evidence for the presence of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy, but the observational uncertainties poorly constrain many of…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 A. Ghez , M. Morris , E. E. Becklin , T. Kremenek , A. Tanner

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, with physical properties inferred from various tracers informed by the extrapolation of structures seen in other galaxies. However, the distances of these tracers are measured indirectly and are…

A promising method for measuring the total mass of the dark matter near a supermassive black hole at the center of the Galaxy based on observations of nonrelativistic precession of the orbits of fast S0 stars together with constraints on…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-08-25 V. I. Dokuchaev , Yu. N. Eroshenko

We present a simple method for fitting parametrized mass models of the Milky Way to observational constraints. We take a Bayesian approach which allows us to take into account input from photometric and kinematic data, and expectations from…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-27 Paul J. McMillan

In this paper we model the vertical structure of mass distribution of the Milky Way galaxy in the framework of a finite-width global disk model. Assuming the Galactic rotation curve only, we test inside the solar orbit the predictions of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2014-06-23 Joanna Jałocha , Szymon Sikora , Łukasz Bratek , Marek Kutschera

The distance to the Galactic center $R_0$ is a fundamental parameter for understanding the Milky Way, because all observations of our Galaxy are made from our heliocentric reference point. The uncertainty in $R_0$ limits our knowledge of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-12-14 Henry W. Leung , Jo Bovy , J. Ted Mackereth , Jason A. S. Hunt , Richard R. Lane , John C. Wilson

Using action-based distribution function for the dynamical model of the Milky Way we have estimated its total mass and its density profile. Constraints are coming from the globular cluster proper motions from Gaia EDR3, from the rotation…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-11-30 Jianling Wang , Francois Hammer , Yanbin Yang

This work verifies the principle that gravitation is caused by {\it energy} and not simply by mass alone. A model is proposed in which cosmic ray protons flow radially through the galaxy. The resulting electric field energy creates a…

General Physics · Physics 2014-07-29 Kenneth Dalton

In a series of three papers, Eadie et al. developed a hierarchical Bayesian method to estimate the Milky Way Galaxy's mass given a physical model for the potential, a measurement model, and kinematic data of test particles such as globular…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-10-08 Gwendolyn M. Eadie , Benjamin W. Keller , William E. Harris

We use data from the Gaia DR3 dataset to estimate the mass of the Milky Way (MW) by analyzing the rotation curve in the range of distances 5 kpc to 28 kpc. We consider three mass models: the first model adds a spherical dark matter (DM)…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-03-29 Francesco Sylos Labini , Zofia Chrobakova , Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta , Martin Lopez-Corredoira

We consider a toy model for the supermassive compact object at the galactic center that does not require the presence of a black hole. We assume a matter distribution of weakly interacting particles with a density profile inferred from dark…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2019-05-20 Kuantay Boshkayev , Daniele Malafarina

The Galactic Center of the Milky Way, thanks to its proximity, allows to perform astronomical observations that investigate physical phenomena at the edge of astrophysics and fundamental physics. As such, it offers a unique laboratory to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-09-08 Mariafelicia de Laurentis , Ivan De Martino , Riccardo Della Monica

Evidence from a variety of sources points towards the existence of a bar in the central few kpc of the Galaxy. The measurements roughly agree on the direction of the bar major axis, but other parameters (axis ratio, size, pattern speed) are…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-02-03 Konrad Kuijken

Context. Although a variety of techniques have been employed for determining the Milky Way dark matter halo mass distribution, the range of allowed masses spans both light and heavy values. Knowing the precise mass of our Galaxy is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-04-19 Giacomo Fragione , Abraham Loeb