scholarly journals Evolution of the Galactic Halo and Disk

1995 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 99-107
Author(s):  
Gerard Gilmore

Correlations between stellar kinematics and chemical abundances are fossil evidence for evolutionary connections between Galactic structural components. Extensive stellar surveys show that the only tolerably clear distinction between galactic components appears in the distributions of specific angular momentum. Here the stellar metal-poor halo and the metal-rich bulge are indistinguishable from each other, as are the thick disk and the old disk. Each pair is very distinct from the other. This leads to an evolutionary model in which the metal-poor stellar halo evolves into the inner bulge, while the thick disk is a precursor to the thin disk. These evolutionary sequences are distinct. The galaxy is made of two discrete “populations”, one of low and one of high angular momentum. Some (minor?) complexity is added to this picture by the debris of late and continuing mergers, which will be especially important in the outer stellar halo.

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (S344) ◽  
pp. 122-124
Author(s):  
J. V. Sales Silva ◽  
H. Perottoni ◽  
K. Cunha ◽  
H. J. Rocha-Pinto ◽  
D. Souto ◽  
...  

AbstractThe outer stellar halo is home to a number of substructures that are remnants of former interactions of the Galaxy with its dwarf satellites. Triangulum-Andromeda (TriAnd) is one of these halo substructures, found as a debris cloud by Rocha-Pinto et al., (2004) using 2MASS M giants. Would be these structures related to dwarf galaxies or to the galactic disk? To uncover the nature of these stars we performed a high-resolution spectroscopic study (R = 40,000) along with a kinematic analysis using Gaia data. We determined the atmospheric parameters and chemical abundances of Ca and Mg for the 13 TriAnd candidate stars along with their respective orbits. Our results indicate that the TriAnd stars analyzed have a galactic nature but that these stars are not from the local thin disk.


2012 ◽  
Vol 8 (S295) ◽  
pp. 309-310
Author(s):  
Cuihua Du ◽  
Xiyan Peng

AbstractBased on the South Galactic Cap U-band Sky Survey (SCUSS) and SDSS observations, we adopted the star-count method to analyze the stellar distribution in different directions of the Galaxy. We find that the scale height of the disk may be variable with the observed direction, which cannot simply be attributed to statistical errors. The main reason can be possibly attributed to the disk (mainly the thick disk) being flared, with a scale height increasing with radius. The axis ratio of the Galactic halo is in the range 0.4-0.6. This finding supports Galactic models with a flattened inner halo, partly formed through a merger early in the Galaxy's history.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (S255) ◽  
pp. 323-329
Author(s):  
Timothy C. Beers ◽  
Young Sun Lee ◽  
Daniela Carollo

AbstractMassive spectroscopic surveys of stars in the thick disk and halo populations of the Galaxy hold the potential to provide strong constraints on the processes involved in (and the timing of) the assembly history of the primary structural components of the Galaxy. In this talk, we explore what has been learned from one of the first such dedicated surveys, SDSS/SEGUE. Over the course of the past three years, SEGUE has obtained spectra for over 200,000 stars, while another hundred thousand stars been added from the calibration star observations of the (primarily extragalactic) SDSS, and other directed programs. A total of well over 10,000 stars with [Fe/H] < −2.0 have been discovered, including several hundred with [Fe/H] < −3.0. Their kinematics have revealed a inner/outer halo structure of the Galaxy.New determinations of the alpha element ratios for tens of thousands of these stars are reported. Correlations of the alpha-element ratios with kinematics and orbital parameters can be used to test models of the likely formation of the thick-disk and halo components. These new data will (eventually) be considered in connection with possible associations with the present dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.


1994 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 435-439
Author(s):  
C. Soubiran

A sample including 2370 stars with (U, V) velocities has been analyzed up to z = 2.5 kpc. It is shown that the observed vertical gradient in the velocity distribution can be explained by the sum of 3 discrete populations with constant kinematics. The observations are well fitted by exponential density laws for the thin disk and the thick disk with scale lengths of 280 pc and 700 pc respectively, and with local densities of 6% and 0.15% for the thick disk and halo respectively.


2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miho N. Ishigaki ◽  
Wako Aoki ◽  
Masashi Chiba

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (S344) ◽  
pp. 38-41
Author(s):  
Cuihua Du ◽  
Hefan Li ◽  
Heidi Jo Newberg

AbstractBased on the second Gaia data release and spectroscopy from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) Data, we identified 23,582 halo stars kinematically. The halo streams in the solar neighborhood could be detected in the space of energy and angular momentum. We reshuffle the velocities of these stars to determine the significance of the substructure. Finally, we find 14 statistically significant substructures and several substructures are not reported by previous works. These structures may be the debris of dwarf galaxies accretion event and their dynamical and chemical information can help to understand the history of the Galaxy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (S334) ◽  
pp. 38-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah L Martell

AbstractThe Galactic halo has a complex assembly history, which can be seen in its wealth of kinematic and chemical substructure. Globular clusters lose stars through tidal interactions with the Galaxy and cluster evaporation processes, meaning that they are inevitably a source of halo stars. These “migrants” from globular clusters can be recognized in the halo field by the characteristic light element abundance anticorrelations that are commonly observed only in globular cluster stars, and the number of halo stars that can be chemically tagged to globular clusters can be used to place limits on the formation pathways of those clusters.


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