Related papers: Weighing the Milky Way
The Milky Way is a barred galaxy whose central bulge has a box/peanut shape and consists of multiple stellar populations with different orbit distributions. This review describes dynamical and chemo-dynamical equilibrium models for the…
The growing trove of precision astrometric observations from the Gaia space telescope and other surveys is revealing the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way in ever more exquisite detail. We summarize the current status of our…
Recent measurements of the Milky Way rotation curve found a sharp decline at around $15$-$20$ kpc from the center of the Galaxy, suggesting that the Galactic dark matter halo is much less massive than predicted by other dynamical tracers.…
Microlensing is now a very popular observational astronomical technique. The investigations accessible through this effect range from the dark matter problem to the search for extra-solar planets. In this review, the techniques to search…
Dark matter comprises the bulk of the matter in the universe but its particle nature and cosmological origin remain mysterious. Knowledge of the dark matter density distribution in the Milky Way Galaxy is crucial to both our understanding…
We measure the circular velocity curve $v_{\rm c}(R)$ of the Milky Way with the highest precision to date across Galactocentric distances of $5\leq R \leq 25$ kpc. Our analysis draws on the $6$-dimensional phase-space coordinates of…
Flat rotation curves of spiral galaxies are considered as an evidence for dark matter, but the rotation curve of the Milky Way is difficult to measure. Various objects were used to track the rotation curve in the outer parts of the Galaxy,…
Gravitational lensing is one of a number of methods used to probe the distribution of dark mass in the Universe. On galactic scales, complementary techniques include the use of stellar kinematics, kinematics and morphology of the neutral…
In order to test the reliability of determinations of the shapes of galaxies' dark matter halos, we have made such measurements for the Milky Way by two independent methods, which make use of the stellar kinematics in the solar…
We present an approach to measure the Milky Way (MW) potential using the angular accelerations of stars in aggregate as measured by astrometric surveys like Gaia. Accelerations directly probe the gradient of the MW potential, as opposed to…
We introduce a potentially powerful method for constraining or discovering a thin dark matter disk in the Milky Way. The method relies on the relationship between the midplane densities and scale heights of interstellar gas being determined…
We use the adiabatic compression theory to build a physically well - motivated Milky Way mass model in agreement with the observational data. The visible mass of the Galaxy is distributed in a spheroidal bulge and a multi - components disc…
We simulate the observations of proper motion of stars very close to the Galactic Center. We show that the speckle interferometry done with the Keck II telescope is accurate enough to obtain orbital parameters for stars with the period P…
In 1785 astronomer William Herschel mapped out the shape of the Milky Way star system using measurements he called "star-gages." Herschel's star-gage method is described in detail, with particular attention given to the assumptions on which…
Inverting the stellar statistics equation from 2MASS star counts, we obtain the 3D density distribution of the Galactic bulge as well as its luminosity function in the K-band. This results in a boxy bulge with axial ratios 1:0.5:0.4 and a…
Over the last decade there have been a series of results supporting the hypothesis of the existence of a long thin bar in the Milky Way with a half-length of 4.5 kpc and a position angle of around 45 deg. This is apparently a very different…
We introduce a method to infer the vertical distribution of stars in the Milky Way using a Poisson likelihood function, with a view to applying our method to the Gaia catalogue. We show how to account for the sample selection function and…
We discuss a novel approach to "weighing" the Milky Way dark matter halo, one that combines the latest samples of halo stars selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) with state-of-the-art numerical simulations of Milky Way analogs.…
We propose a method to estimate the location of the Sun in the disk of the Milky Way using a method based on the Hellinger distance and construct confidence sets on our estimate of the unknown location using a bootstrap based method.…
In this work, we investigate whether the compact object at the center of the Milky Way is a naked singularity described by the $\textit{q}$-metric spacetime. Our fitting of the astrometric and spectroscopic data for the S2 star implies that…