Several open questions on galaxy formation and evolution have their roots in the lack of a universal star formation law, that could univocally link the gas properties, e.g. its density, to the star formation rate (SFR) density. In a recent paper, we used a sample of nearby disc galaxies to infer the volumetric star formation (VSF) law, a tight correlation between the gas and the SFR volume densities derived under the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium for the gas disc. However, due to the dearth of information about the vertical distribution of the SFR in these galaxies, we could not find a unique slope for the VSF law, but two alternative values. In this paper, we use the scale height of the SFR density distribution in our Galaxy adopting classical Cepheids (age$\lesssim 200$ Myr) as tracers of star formation. We show that this latter is fully compatible with the flaring scale height expected from gas in hydrostatic equilibrium. These scale heights allowed us to convert the observed surface densities of gas and SFR into the corresponding volume densities. Our results indicate that the VSF law $ρ_\mathrm{SFR} \propto ρ_\mathrm{gas}^α$ with $α\approx 2$ is valid in the Milky Way as well as in nearby disc galaxies.
We investigate the extended-Schmidt (ES) law in volume densities ($ρ_{\rm SFR}$ $\propto$ $(ρ_{\rm gas}ρ_{\rm star}^{0.5})^{α^{\rm VES}}$) for spatially-resolved regions in spiral, dwarf, and ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs), and compare to the volumetric Kennicutt-Schmidt (KS) law ($ρ_{\rm SFR}$ $\propto$ $ρ_{\rm gas}^{α^{\rm VKS}}$). We first characterize these star formation laws in individual galaxies using a sample of 11 spirals, finding median slopes $α^{\rm VES}$=0.98 and $α^{\rm VKS}$=1.42, with a galaxy-to-galaxy rms fluctuation that is substantially smaller for the volumetric ES law (0.…
We observe the almost edge-on (i $\sim$ 90 degrees) galaxy NGC 4302 using ALMA (CO) and VLA (H I) to measure the gas disk thickness for investigating the volumetric star formation law (SFL). The recent star formation rate (SFR) is estimated based on a linear combination of IR 24 micron and H$α$ emissions. The measured scale heights of CO and H I increase significantly with radius. Using the scale heights along with the vertically integrated surface densities, we derive the mid-plane volume densities of the gas ($ρ_{\rm HI}$, $ρ_{\rm H_2}$, and $ρ_{\rm gas}$ = $ρ_{\rm HI}$+$ρ_{\rm H_2}$) and th…
In the last decades, much effort has been put into finding the star formation law which could unequivocally link the gas and the star formation rate (SFR) densities measured on sub-kiloparsec scale in star-forming galaxies. The conventional approach of using the observed surface densities to infer star formation laws has however revealed a major and well-known issue, as such relations are valid for the high-density regions of galaxies but break down in low-density and HI-dominated environments. Recently, an empirical correlation between the total gas (HI+H$_2$) and the star formation rate (SFR…
Star formation (SF) laws are fundamental relations between the gas content of a galaxy and its star formation rate (SFR) and play key roles in galaxy evolution models. In this paper, we present new empirical SF laws of disc galaxies based on volume densities. Following the assumption of hydrostatic equilibrium, we calculated the radial growth of the thickness of the gaseous discs in the combined gravitational potential of dark matter, stars, and gas for 12 nearby star-forming galaxies. This allowed us to convert the observed surface densities of gas and SFR into the deprojected volume densitie…
We measure the gas disc thicknesses of the edge-on galaxy NGC 4013 and the less edge-on galaxies (NGC 4157 and 5907) using CO (CARMA/OVRO) and/or HI (EVLA) observations. We also estimate the scale heights of stars and/or the star formation rate (SFR) for our sample of five galaxies using Spitzer IR data (3.6 $μ$m and 24 $μ$m). We derive the average volume densities of the gas and the SFR using the measured scale heights along with radial surface density profiles. Using the volume density that is more physically relevant to the SFR than the surface density, we investigate the existence of a vol…
We use distant Blue Horizontal Branch stars with Galactocentric distances 16 < r/kpc < 48 as kinematic tracers of the Milky Way dark halo. We model the tracer density as an oblate, power-law embedded within a spherical power-law potential. Using a distribution function method, we estimate the overall power-law potential and the velocity anisotropy of the halo tracers. We measure the slope of the potential to be gamma ~ 0.4 and the overall mass within 50 kpc is ~ 4 x 10^11 M_sol. The tracer velocity anisotropy is radially biased with beta ~ 0.5, which is in good agreement with local solar neigh…
The Schmidt law (SF law) in the Milky Way was investigated using 3D distribution maps of HII regions, HI and molecular (\Htwo) gases with spatial resolutions of $\sim 1$ kpc in the Galactic plane and a few tens of pc in the vertical direction. HII regions were shown to be distributed in a star-forming (SF) disk with nearly constant vertical full thickness 92 pc in spatial coincidence with the molecular gas disk. The vertically averaged volume star formation rate (SFR) $ρ_{\rm SFR}$ in the SF disk is related to the surface SFR $Σ_{\rm SFR}$ by $ρ_{\rm SFR} /[{\rm M_\odot y^{-1} kpc^{-3}}] =9.26…
While the shape of the extinction curve on the infrared is considered to be set and the extinction ratios between infrared bands are usually taken to be approximately constant, a recent number of studies point either to a spatially variable behavior on the exponent of the power law or to a different extinction law altogether. In this paper, we propose a method to analyze the overall behavior of the interstellar extinction by means of the red-clump population, and we apply it to those areas of the Milky Way where the presence of interstellar matter is heavily felt: areas located in 5 deg<l<30 d…
The extinction law from $0.9$ to $8$ microns in the inner $3\times3$ deg$^2$ of the Milky Way is measured using data from VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea, GLIMPSE and WISE. Absolute extinction ratios are found by requiring that the observed red clump density peaks at the GRAVITY collaboration distance to the Galactic centre. When combined with selective extinction ratios measured from the bulge giant colour-colour diagrams, we find an extinction law of $A_Z:A_Y:A_J:A_H:A_{K_s}:A_{W1}:A_{[3.6]}:A_{[4.5]}:A_{W2}:A_{[5.8]}:A_{[8.0]} =7.19(0.30):5.11(0.20):3.23(0.11):1.77(0.04):1:0.54(0.02):0.46…
We have obtained column density maps for an unbiased sample of 120 molecular clouds in the third quadrant of the Milky Way mid-plane (b$\le |5|^{\circ}$) within the galactic longitude range from 195$^{\circ}$ to 225$^{\circ}$, using the high sensitivity $^{12}$CO and $^{13}$CO ($J=1-0$) data from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting (MWISP) project. The probability density functions of the molecular hydrogen column density of the clouds, N-PDFs, are fitted with both log-normal (LN) function and log-normal plus power-law (LN+PL) function. The molecular clouds are classified into three categori…
The all-Galaxy CO survey of Dame, Hartmann, & Thaddeus (2001) is by far the most uniform, large-scale Galactic CO survey. Using a dendrogram-based decomposition of this survey, we present a catalog of 1064 massive molecular clouds throughout the Galactic plane. This catalog contains $2.5 \times 10^8$ solar masses, or $25^{+10.7}_{-5.8} \%$ of the Milky Way's estimated H$_2$ mass. We track clouds in some spiral arms through multiple quadrants. The power index of Larson's first law, the size-linewidth relation, is consistent with 0.5 in all regions - possibly due to an observational bias - but c…
Classical Cepheids (CCs) are at the heart of the empirical extragalactic distance ladder. Milky Way CCs are the only stars of this class accessible to trigonometric parallax measurements. Until recently, the most accurate trigonometric parallaxes of Milky Way CCs were the HST/FGS measurements collected by Benedict et al. (2002, 2007) and HST/WFC3 measurements by Riess et al. (2018). Unfortunately, the second Gaia data release (GDR2) has not yet delivered reliable parallaxes for Galactic CCs, failing to replace the HST as the foundation of the Galactic calibrations of the Leavitt law. We aim at…
We present core radii for 54 Milky Way globular clusters determined by fitting King-Michie models to cumulative projected star count distributions. We find that fitting star counts rather than surface brightness profiles produces results that differ significantly due to the presence of mass segregation. The sample in each cluster is further broken down into various mass groups, each of which is fit independently, allowing us to determine how the concentration of each cluster varies with mass. The majority of the clusters in our sample show general agreement with the standard picture that more …
Based on a simple model of the chemical evolution of the Milky Way disk, we investigate the disk oxygen abundance gradient and its time evolution. Two star formation rates (SFRs) are considered, one is the classical Kennicutt-Schmidt law ($ Ψ= 0.25 Σ_{\rm{gas}}^{1.4}$, hereafter C-KS law), another is the modified Kennicutt law ($Ψ= αΣ_{\rm{gas}}^{1.4} ({V/r})$, hereafter M-KS law). In both cases, the model can produce some amount of abundance gradient, and the gradient is steeper in the early epoch of disk evolution. However, we find that when C-KS law is adopted, the classical chemical evolut…
We introduce a new maximum likelihood method to model the density profile of Blue Horizontal Branch and Blue Straggler stars and apply it to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 8 (DR8) photometric catalogue. There are a large number (20,000) of these tracers available over an impressive 14,000 square degrees in both Northern and Southern Galactic hemispheres, and they provide a robust measurement of the shape of the Milky Way stellar halo. After masking out stars in the vicinity of the Virgo Overdensity and the Sagittarius stream, the data are consistent with a smooth, oblate stellar hal…
This is the second of three papers that search for the predicted stellar cusp around the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*, with new data and methods. We aim to infer the distribution of the faintest stellar population currently accessible through observations around Sagittarius A*. We use adaptive optics assisted high angular resolution images obtained with the NACO instrument at the ESO VLT. Through optimised PSF fitting we remove the light from all detected stars above a given magnitude limit. Subsequently we analyse the remaining, diffuse light density. The analysed diffuse li…
We present the structure of the Milky Way stellar halo beyond Galactocentric distances of $r = 50$ kpc traced by blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars, which are extracted from the survey data in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). We select BHB candidates based on $(g,r,i,z)$ photometry, where the $z$-band is on the Paschen series and the colors that involve the $z$-band are sensitive to surface gravity. About 450 BHB candidates are identified between $r = 50$ kpc and 300 kpc, most of which are beyond the reach of previous large surveys including the Sloan Digital Sky Surve…
One of the most robust observations of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is its near-universality in the Milky Way and neighboring galaxies. But recent observations of early-type galaxies can be interpreted to imply a bottom-heavy IMF, while others of ultra-faint dwarfs could imply a top-heavy IMF. This would impose powerful constraints on star formation models. We explore what sort of cloud-scale IMF models could possibly satisfy these constraints. We utilize simulated galaxies which reproduce (broadly) the observed galaxy properties, while they also provide the detailed star formation …
We present a cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy used to explore the formation and evolution of star clusters. We investigate in particular the origin of the bimodality observed in the colour and metallicity of globular clusters, and the environmental evolution through cosmic times in the form of tidal tensors. Our results self-consistently confirm previous findings that the blue, metal-poor clusters form in satellite galaxies which are accreted onto the Milky Way, while the red, metal-rich clusters form mostly in situ or, to a lower extent in massive, self-enriched gala…
We review the state of our chemical evolution models for spiral and low mass galaxies. We analyze the consequences of using different stellar yields, infall rate laws and star formation prescriptions in the time/redshift evolution of the radial distributions of abundances, and other quantities as star formation rate or gas densities, in the Milky Way Galaxy; In particular we will study the evolution of the Oxygen abundance radial gradient analyzing its relation with the ratio SFR/infall. We also compare the results with our old chemical evolution models, cosmological simulations and with the e…
We present a panoramic map of the stellar streams of the Milky Way based upon astrometric and photometric measurements from the Gaia DR2 catalogue. In this first contribution, we concentrate on the halo at heliocentric distances beyond 5 kpc, and at Galactic latitudes $|b|>30°$, using the STREAMFINDER algorithm to detect structures along plausible orbits that are consistent with the Gaia proper motion measurements. We find a rich network of criss-crossing streams in the halo. Some of these structures were previously-known, several are new discoveries, but others are potentially artefacts of th…
The following is a comment on the recent letter by Iocco et al. (2015, arXiv:1502.03821) where the authors claim to have found "...convincing proof of the existence of dark matter...". The letter in question presents a compilation of recent rotation curve observations for the Milky Way, together with Newtonian rotation curve estimates based on recent baryonic matter distribution measurements. A mismatch between the former and the latter is then presented as "evidence for dark matter". Here we show that the reported discrepancy is the well known gravitational anomaly which consistently appears …
(abridged) In this paper we revisit the problem of inferring the innermost structure of the Milky Way's nuclear star cluster via star counts, to clarify whether it displays a core or a cusp around the central black hole. Through image stacking and improved PSF fitting we push the completeness limit about one magnitude deeper than in previous, comparable work. Contrary to previous work, we analyse the stellar density in well-defined magnitude ranges in order to be able to constrain stellar masses and ages. The RC and brighter giant stars display a core-like surface density profile within a proj…
The Cepheid Period-Luminosity (PL) relation is the key tool for measuring astronomical distances and for establishing the extragalactic distance scale. In particular, the local value of the Hubble constant ($H_0$) strongly depends on Cepheid distance measurements. The recent Gaia Data Releases and other parallax measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) already enabled to improve the accuracy of the slope ($α$) and intercept ($β$) of the PL relation. However, the dependence of this law on metallicity is still largely debated. In this paper, we combine three samples of Cepheids in the …
We propose a new model for the dark matter halo of the Milky Way that fits the properties of the stellar stream associated with the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. Our dark halo is oblate with q_z = 0.9 for r < 10 kpc, and can be made to follow the Law & Majewski model at larger radii. However, we find that the dynamical perturbations induced by the Large Magellanic Cloud on the orbit of Sgr cannot be neglected when modeling its streams. When taken into account, this leads us to constrain the Galaxy's outer halo shape to have minor-to-major axis ratio (c/a)_Φ= 0.8 and intermediate-to-major axis rati…
Milky Way Dynamics Favor Dark Matter over Modified Gravity Models
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院紫金山天文台）；University of Science and Technology of China（中国科学技术大学）；National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；University of Saint Andrews（圣安德鲁斯大学）
Most of known RR Lyraes are type ab RR Lyraes (RRLab), and they are the excellent tool to map the Milky Way and its substructures. We find that 1148 RRLab stars determined by Drake et al.(2013) have been observed by spectroscopic surveys of SDSS and LAMOST. We derived radial velocity dispersion, circular velocity and mass profile from 860 halo tracers in our paper I. Here, we present the stellar densities and radial velocity distributions of thick disk and halo of the Milky Way. The 288 RRLab stars located in the thick disk have the mean metallicity of [Fe/H]$=-1.02$. Three thick disk tracers …
The Besançon Galaxy model was used to compare the infrared colour distribution of synthetic stars with those from 2MASS observations taking the selection function of the data into account, in order to study the shape of the stellar halo of the Milky Way, with complemetary spectroscopic data from SDSS-III/APOGEE survey. Furthermore, we compared the generated mock metallicity distribution of the Besançon Galaxy model, to the intrinsic metallicity distribution with reliable stellar parameters from the APOGEE Stellar Parameters and Chemical Abundances Pipeline (ASPCAP). The comparison was carried …
We present a fully consistent evolutionary disc model of the solar cylinder. The model is based on a sequence of stellar sub-populations described by the star formation history (SFR) and the dynamical heating law (given by the age-velocity dispersion relation AVR). The combination of kinematic data from Hipparcos and the finite lifetimes of main sequence (MS) stars enables us to determine the detailed vertical disc structure independent of individual stellar ages and only weakly dependent on the IMF. The disc parameters are determined by applying a sophisticated best fit algorithm to the MS st…
Whilst the star formation rate (SFR) of molecular clouds and galaxies is key in understanding galaxy evolution, the physical processes which determine the SFR remain unclear. This uncertainty about the underlying physics has resulted in various different star formation laws, all having substantial intrinsic scatter. Extending upon previous works that define the column density of star formation (Sigma_SFR) by the gas column density (Sigma_gas), we develop a new universal star formation (SF) law based on the multi-freefall prescription of gas. This new SF law relies predominantly on the probabil…
We report results concerning the distribution and properties of galactic extinction at high galactic latitudes derived from stellar statistics using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We use the classical Wolf diagram method to identify regions with extinction, and derive the extinction and the extinction law of the dust using all five SDSS spectral bands. We estimate the distance to the extinguishing medium using simple assumptions about the stellar populations in the line of sight. We report the identification of three extinguishing clouds, each a few tens of pc wide, producing 0.2-0.4 mag…
We characterise the radial density, metallicity and flattening profile of the Milky Way's stellar halo, based on the large sample of 1757 spectroscopically confirmed giant stars from SDSS/SEGUE-2 after excising stars that were algorithmically attributed to apparent halo substructure (including the Sagittarius stream). Compared to BHB stars or RR Lyrae, giants are more readily understood tracers of the overall halo star population, with less bias in age or metallicity. The well-characterized selection function of the sample enables forward modelling of those data, based on ellipsoidal stellar d…
The Escape Velocity Profile of the Milky Way from Gaia DR3
Department of Physics and MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research（麻省理工学院卡弗里天体物理与空间研究所）；The NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions（美国国家科学基金会人工智能基础相互作用研究所）；Department of Physics, University of California San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校物理系）
We have studied the properties of molecular clouds in the second quadrant of the Milky Way Mid-plane from l$=$104$.\!\!^{\circ}$75 to l$=$119$.\!\!^{\circ}$75 and b$=-$5$.\!\!^{\circ}$25 to b$=$5$.\!\!^{\circ}$25 using the $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, and C$^{18}$O $J=1-0$ emission line data from the Milky Way Imaging Scroll Painting project (MWISP). We have identified 857 and 300 clouds in the $^{12}$CO and $^{13}$CO spectral cubes, respectively, using the DENDROGRAM + SCIMES algorithms. The distances of the molecular clouds are estimated and the physical properties like masses, sizes, and surface d…
We present the stellar density profile of the outer halo of the Galaxy traced over a range of Galactocentric radii from $15< R_{GC} < 220$ kpc by blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars. These stars are identified photometrically using deep $u-$band imaging from the new Canada-France-Imaging-Survey (CFIS) that reaches 24.5 mag. This is combined with $griz$ bands from Pan-STARRS 1 and covers a total of $\sim4000$ deg$^2$ of the northern sky. We present a new method to select BHB stars that has low contamination from blue stragglers and high completeness. We use this sample to measure and parameteriz…
The Ks band differential star count of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) is used to derive the global structure parameters of the smooth components of the Milky Way. To avoid complication introduced by other fine structures and significant extinction near and at the Galactic plane, we only consider Galactic latitude |b| > 30 degree data. The star count data is fitted with a threecomponent model: double exponential thin disk and thick disk, and a power law decay oblate halo. Using maximum likelihood the best-fit local density of thin disk is n0 = 0.030 +- 0.002 stars/pc^3. The best-fit scal…
Classical Cepheids provide the foundation for the empirical extragalactic distance ladder. Milky Way Cepheids are the only stars in this class accessible to trigonometric parallax measurements. However, the parallaxes of Cepheids from the second Gaia data release (GDR2) are affected by systematics because of the absence of chromaticity correction, and occasionally by saturation. As a proxy for the parallaxes of 36 Galactic Cepheids, we adopt either the GDR2 parallaxes of their spatially resolved companions or the GDR2 parallax of their host open cluster. This novel approach allows us to bypass…
We explore the fundamental relations governing the radial and vertical velocity dispersions of stars in the Milky Way, from combined studies of complementary surveys including GALAH, LAMOST, APOGEE, the NASA $Kepler$ and K2 missions, and $Gaia$ DR2. We find that different stellar samples, even though they target different tracer populations and employ a variety of age estimation techniques, follow the same set of fundamental relations. We provide the clearest evidence to date that, in addition to the well-known dependence on stellar age, the velocity dispersions of stars depend on orbital angu…
Variation of the volume- and surface-Schmidt laws (star-formation or SF law) with the galacto-centric distance R was investigated using 3D distributions of HII regions, HI, and molecular (H_2) gases in the Milky Way. Both the power-law index and SF coefficient were found to be variable with R. The index is flatter in the inner disc than in the outer Galaxy, and the coefficient is larger in the inner disc, decreasing steeply outward. There is also a mutual anti-correlation between the index and SF coefficient, and the SF law can be expressed by a single-parameter function of the SF coefficient.…
The Three-mm Ultimate Mopra Milky Way Survey. III. Data Release 6, An Atlas of Physical Conditions, Global Mass Conversion Laws, and 3D Physical Architecture of the Molecular ISM in the Fourth Quadrant
We use deep $HST$ WFC3/IR imaging to study the Initial Mass Function (IMF) of the ultra faint dwarf galaxy Coma Berenices (Com Ber). Our observations reach the lowest stellar mass ever probed in a resolved galaxy, with 50\% completeness at $\sim 0.17$ M$_{\odot}$. Unresolved background galaxies however limit our purity below $\sim 0.23$ M$_{\odot}$. If modeled with a single power law, we find that the IMF slope is $-1.45^{+0.29}_{-0.3}$ (68\% credible intervals), compared to a Milky Way value of $-2.3$. For a broken power law, we obtain a low-mass slope of $-1.18_{-0.33}^{+0.49}$, a high-mass …
Observations reveal a universal stellar mass-stellar metallicity relation (MZR) existing in Local Group dwarfs of different types, $Z_*\propto M_*^α$ with $α=0.30\pm0.02$. In this work, we investigate the "universality" of the MZRs for both satellites and central galaxies in a large number of different host dark matter halos covering a large mass range of $10^9$-$10^{15}h^{-1}M_\odot$, by using a semianalytical galaxy formation and evolution model. We obtain the following results. (1) The exponents ($α$) for the MZRs of the satellites in halos with the same mass as the Milky Way halo but diffe…
Binary-single and binary-binary encounters play a pivotal role in the evolution of star clusters, as they may lead to the disruption or hardening of binaries, a novel prediction of the Hills-Heggie law. Based on our recent {\it Chandra} survey of Galactic globular clusters (GCs), we revisit the role of stellar dynamical interactions in GCs, focusing on main-sequence (MS) binary encounters as a potential formation channel of the observed X-ray sources in GCs. We show that the cumulative X-ray luminosity ($L_X$), a proxy of the total number of X-ray-emitting binaries (primarily cataclysmic varia…
We describe a new mm-wave molecular-line mapping survey of the southern Galactic Plane and its first data releases. The Three-mm Ultimate Mopra Milky Way Survey (ThrUMMS) maps a 60°x2° sector of our Galaxy's fourth quadrant, using a combination of fast mapping techniques with the Mopra radio telescope, simultaneously in the J=1-0 lines of $^{12}$CO, $^{13}$CO, C$^{18}$O, and CN near 112 GHz at ~arcminute and ~0.3 km s$^{-1}$ resolution, with ~2 K channel$^{-1}$ sensitivity for $^{12}$CO and ~1 K channel$^{-1}$ for the other transitions. The calibrated data cubes from these observations are mad…
The radial number density and flattening of the Milky Way's stellar halo is measured with $\mathrm{5351}$ metal-poor ([Fe/H]$<-1$) K giants from LAMOST DR3, using a nonparametric method which is model independent and largely avoids the influence of halo substucture. The number density profile is well described by a single power law with index $5.03^{+0.64}_{-0.64}$, and flattening that varies with radius. The stellar halo traced by LAMOST K giants is more flattened at smaller radii, and becomes nearly spherical at larger radii. The flattening, $q$, is about 0.64, 0.8, 0.96 at $r=15$, 20 and 30…
We map the stellar structure of the Galactic thick disk and halo by applying color-magnitude diagram (CMD) fitting to photometric data from the SEGUE survey, allowing, for the first time, a comprehensive analysis of their structure at both high and low latitudes using uniform SDSS photometry. Incorporating photometry of all relevant stars simultaneously, CMD fitting bypasses the need to choose single tracer populations. Using old stellar populations of differing metallicities as templates we obtain a sparse 3D map of the stellar mass distribution at |Z|>1 kpc. Fitting a smooth Milky Way model …
We use Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey data for 170 deg^2, recalibrated and transformed to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugri photometric system, to study the distribution of near-turnoff main-sequence stars in the Galactic halo along four lines of sight to heliocentric distances of ~35 kpc. We find that the halo stellar number density profile becomes steeper at Galactocentric distances greater than R_{gal}~28 kpc, with the power law index changing from n_{inner}=-2.62+-0.04 to n_{outer}=-3.8+-0.1. In particular, we test a series of single power law models and find them to be stron…
The Carnegie Hubble Program (CHP) is designed to calibrate the extragalactic distance scale using data from the post-cryogenic era of the Spitzer Space Telescope. The ultimate goal of the CHP is a systematic improvement in the distance scale leading to a determination of the Hubble Constant to within an accuracy of 2%. This paper focuses on the measurement and calibration of the Galactic Cepheid Period-Luminosity (Leavitt) Relation using the warm Spitzer IRAC 1 and 2 bands at 3.6 and 4.5 μm. We present photometric measurements covering the period range 4 - 70 days for 37 Galactic Cepheids. Dat…
We infer the past orbit of the Sagittarius (Sgr) dwarf galaxy in the Milky Way halo by integrating backwards from its observed position and proper motions, including the effects of dynamical friction. Given measured proper motions, we show that there is a relation between the eccentricity ($e$) of Sgr's orbit and the mass of the Milky Way ($M_{T}$) in the limit of no dynamical friction. That relation can be fit by a power-law of the form: $e \approx 0.49 \left(M_{T}/10^{12} M_{\odot}\right)^{-0.88}$. At a fixed Milky Way mass, the dynamical friction term increases the mean eccentricity of the …
The self-consistent vertical density distribution in a thin, isothermal disc is typically given by a sech^2 law, as shown in the classic work by Spitzer (1942). This is obtained assuming that the radial and vertical motions are decoupled and only the vertical term is used in the Poisson equation. We argue that in the region of low density as in the outer disc this treatment is no longer valid. We develop a general, complete model that includes both radial and vertical terms in the Poisson equation and write these in terms of the full radial and vertical Jeans equations which take account of th…
The Milky Way Tomography with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam. II. Global halo structure
Astronomical Institute, Tohoku University（东北大学天文学研究所）；The William H. Miller III, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University（约翰斯·霍普金斯大学物理与天文学系威廉·H·米勒三世楼）
