Although the stellar halo accounts for just ∼1% of the total stellar mass of the Milky Way, the kinematics of halo stars can tell us a lot about the origins and evolution of our Galaxy. It has been shown that the high transverse velocity stars in Gaia DR2 reveal a double sequence in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram, indicating a duality in the local halo within 1 kpc. We fit these stars by updating the popular Besançon/Galaxia model, incorporating the latest observational results for the stellar halo. We are able to obtain a good match to the Gaia data and provide new constraints on the properties of the disc and halo. In particular, we show that the thick disc contribution to this high velocity tail is small, but not negligible, and likely has an influence on the red sequence of the HR diagram.

The unprecedented amount and accuracy of kinematic data from the second release of the Gaia mission have started revolutionizing our understanding of the dynamics of the Milky Way disk. The detailed stellar velocity field in the Galactic disk should allow us to constrain with unprecedented precision the parameters of the non-axisymmetric modes of the disk. We present here the status of our current modelling efforts in this area, and their implication on the dynamics of the Galactic bar in particular.

The stellar disc of the Milky Way exhibits clear departures from planarity, the most conspicuous manifestation being the Galactic Warp but also includes an apparent corrugation pattern in number counts around 15kpc from the Galactic centre, a wave like pattern in the vertical velocities of stars as a function of guiding radius, asymmetries about the midplane in both number counts and bulk motions, and phase spirals in the z–vz projection of the local stellar distribution function. We discuss the physics of these phenomena and, in particular, suggest a possible avenue for inferring the vertical force in the Solar Neighbourhood from phase spirals. We apply Dynamic Mode Decomposition, a technique widely used in the realm of fluid mechanics, to simulations of disc galaxy simulations. This method appears to be particularly well-suited to the study of nonlinear processes such as the coupling of warps and spirals, first discussed by Masset and Tagger.

The Milky Way’s stellar halo preserves a fossil record of smaller dwarf galaxies that merged with the Milky Way throughout its formation history. Currently, though, we lack reliable ways to identify which halo stars originated in which dwarf galaxies or even which stars were definitively accreted. Selecting stars with specific chemical signatures may provide a way forward. We investigate this theoretically and observationally for stars with r-process nucleosynthesis signatures. Theoretically, we combine high-resolution cosmological simulations with an empirically-motivated treatment of r-process enhancement. We find that around half of highly r-process-enhanced metal-poor halo stars may have originated in early ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that merged into the Milky Way during its formation. Observationally, we use Gaia DR2 to compare the kinematics of highly r-process-enhanced halo stars with those of normal halo stars. R-process-enhanced stars have higher galactocentric velocities than normal halo stars, suggesting an accretion origin. If r-process-enhanced stars largely originated in accreted ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, halo stars we observe today could play a key role in understanding the smallest building blocks of the Milky Way via this novel approach of chemical tagging

We describe an algorithm that can fit the properties of the dwarf galaxy progenitor of a tidal stream, given the properties of that stream. We show that under ideal conditions (the Milky Way potential, the orbit of the dwarf galaxy progenitor, and the functional form of the dwarf galaxy progenitor are known exactly), the density and angular width of stars along the stream can be used to constrain the mass and radial profile of both the stellar and dark matter components of the progenitor dwarf galaxy that was ripped apart to create the stream. Our provisional fit for the parameters of the dwarf galaxy progenitor of the Orphan Stream indicates that it is less massive and has fewer stars than previous works have indicated.

We present the recent discovery of new halo structures in the Milky Way (MW) based on the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SSP). HSC is a wide-field imager installed at the prime focus of the Subaru Telescope, and a 300-night survey with this instrument is being carried out in this program. The combination of the superb image quality and depth and the fact that it is a multi-band survey allows us to identify new faint satellites as well as field halo stars in the outskirts of the MW halo beyond the reach of previous surveys. We report here on the new insights into the nature of both stellar and dark halos in the MW as revealed from this on-going survey program and show prospects based on the upcoming large spectroscopic survey with Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph.

A major uncertainty in the determination of the mass profile of the Milky Way using stellar kinematics in the halo is the poorly determined anisotropy parameter, , where σr is the Galactocentric radial velocity dispersion, and σθ and σφ are the tangential components of the velocity dispersion. We have used a sample of over 24,000 Galactic halo K giant and blue horizontal branch stars from the LAMOST stellar spectroscopic survey and SDSS/SEGUE, combined with proper motions from Gaia Data Release 2, to measure β(rgc) over a wide range of Galactocentric distances rgc from 5 to 80 kpc. Kinematic substructures have been carefully removed to reveal the underlying diffuse stellar halo prior to measuring β. We find that orbits are generally radial (β > 0) and β is constant out to distances of about 40 kpc, with a dependence on metallicity of the stars, such that β declines with lower metallicity. Similar behavior is seen in both the K giant and BHB samples.

A recently discovered young, high-velocity giant star J01020100-7122208 is a good candidate of hypervelocity star ejected from the Galactic center, although it has a bound orbit. If we assume that this star was ejected from the Galactic center, it can be used to constrain the Galactic potential, because the deviation of its orbit from a purely radial orbit informs us of the torque that this star has received. Based on this assumption, we estimate the flattening of the Galactic dark matter halo by using the Gaia DR2 data and the circular velocity data. Our Bayesian analysis shows that the orbit of J01020100-7122208 favors a prolate halo within ~ 10 kpc from the Galactic center. The posterior distribution of the density flattening q shows a broad distribution at q ≳ 1 and peaks at q ≃ 1.5. Also, 98.5% of the posterior distribution is located at q > 1, highly disfavoring an oblate halo.

Dynamical models will be key to exploitation of the incoming flood data for our Galaxy. Modelling techniques are reviewed with an emphasis on f(J) modelling.

The inference of the Milky Way halo mass requires modelling the phase space structure of dynamical tracers, with different tracers following different models and having different levels of sensitivity to the halo mass. For steady-state models, deviations from steady-state in the tracer distribution lead to an irreducible stochastic bias. This bias is small for satellite galaxies and dark matter particles, but as large as a factor of 2 for halo stars. This is consistent with the picture that satellite galaxies closely trace the underlying phase space distribution of dark matter particles, while halo stars are less phase-mixed. As a result, the use of only ~100 satellite galaxies can achieve a significantly higher accuracy than that achievable with a much larger sample of halo stars.

The last two years have seen widespread acceptance of the idea that the Milky Way halo was largely created in an early (8-10 Gyr ago) and massive (>1010Mȯ) merger. The roots of this idea pre-date the Gaia mission, but the exquisite proper motions available from Gaia have made the hypothesis irresistible. We trace the history of this idea, reviewing the series of papers that led to our current understanding.

Whiting 1 is a faint and young globular cluster embedded in the Sag dSph. It has similar distance, metalicity and radial velocity with the trailing stream of the Sag. Due to these special properties, Whiting 1 was suggested to be associated with the trailing stream of Sag. However, its origin is still unclear and further investigation of its relation with Sgr dSph is needed. In this work, we use DECaLS data to search the tidal tail of Whiting 1, with the aim of looking for spatial connection between Whiting 1 and Sgr dSph. With Matched Filter method, we detected a tidal tail around the main body of Whiting 1. This tail extends to at least 0.5 degree and aligns with the mean orbit direction of Sgr dSph. This tail is newly detected and it provides additional evidence of the association between Whiting 1 and Sgr trailing stream.

Recent advancements in astrometry and in cosmological models of dark matter halo growth have significantly changed our understanding of the dynamics of the Local Group. The most dramatic changes owe to a new picture of the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way’s most massive satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is most likely on its first passage about the Milky Way and ten times larger in mass than previously assumed. The LMC’s orbit through the Milky Way’s dark matter and stellar halo will leave characteristic signatures in both density and kinematics. Furthermore, the gravitational perturbations produced by both direct tidal forcing from the LMC and the response of the halo to its passage will together cause significant perturbations to the orbits of tracers of the Milky Way’s dark matter distribution. We advocate for the use of basis field expansion methods to fully capture and quantify these effects.

The Large and Small Magellanic Cloud (LMC and SMC) are the most luminous dwarf galaxy satellites of the Milky Way. Thanks to their close proximity (50-60 kpc), they provide one of the best opportunities to study in detail the kinematics of resolved stellar populations in an interacting pair of galaxies. Large photometric surveys like the ongoing Gaia mission and the near-infrared VISTA survey of the Magellanic Cloud system (VMC) will have a significant impact on our insight into the Magellanic system. We have combined the individual strengths of VMC and Gaia DR2 data to improve our understanding of the internal kinematics of the galaxies. In this study, we present results from our ongoing project dedicated to measure and analyse the proper motions of large samples of stars across the Magellanic Clouds, efficiently removing Milk Way foreground stars utilising distances derived with the StarHorse code.

We present observations on optical emission lines acquired with the scanning Fabry-Perot interferometer of the observatoire du Mont Mégantic, of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). A 765 order Fabry-Perot were used with a fast readout EM-CCD. From data obtained, kinematic maps and data points for the rotation curve of the innermost part of the galaxy are derived. Several dozen of regions have been scanned with the Fabry-Perot interferometer and narrow band interference filters. The central 10’x10’ were scanned with five different filters. Observations have been made in order to get better Hα data for kinematics purposes.

The venerable problem of what causes the spiral features in disk galaxies is nearing a solution. In previous work, we have shown that transient spirals in simulations result from the superposition of a few coherent waves that have many properties of modes. The new achievement presented here is a clear demonstration that the evolution of one unstable mode leads to scattering at Lindblad resonances, and the depopulation of phase space at such resonances creates a “groove” that is the cause of a new unstable mode. Thus we now understand that the cause of spiral patterns in simulations is a recurrent cycle of groove modes. In other work, we have used Gaia DR2 data, converted to action-angle variables, to identify resonant scattering features in the Solar neighborhood that closely resemble those seen in the simulations, suggesting that the mechanism that causes spirals in simulations may also be at work in the Milky Way.

The MUSE TIMER Survey has obtained high signal and high spatial resolution integral-field spectroscopy data of the inner ~ 6×6 kpc of 21 nearby massive disc galaxies. This allows studies of the stellar kinematics of the central regions of massive disc galaxies that are unprecedented in spatial resolution. We confirm previous predictions from numerical and hydrodynamical simulations of the effects of bars and inner bars on stellar and gaseous kinematics, and also identify box/peanuts via kinematical signatures in mildly and moderately inclined galaxies, including a box/peanut in a face-on inner bar. In 20/21 galaxies we find inner discs and show that their properties are fully consistent with the bar-driven secular evolution picture for their formation. In addition, we show that these inner discs have, in the region where they dominate, larger rotational support than the main galaxy disc, and discuss how their stellar population properties can be used to estimate when in cosmic history the main bar formed. Our results are compared with photometric studies in the context of the nature of galaxy bulges and we show that inner discs are identified in image decompositions as photometric bulges with exponential profiles (i.e., Sérsic indices near unity).

We investigate how the properties of spiral arms relate to other fundamental galaxy properties. To this end, we use previously published measurements of those properties, and our own measurements of arm-interarm luminosity contrasts for a large sample of galaxies, using 3.6μm images from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies. Flocculent galaxies are clearly distinguished from other spiral arm classes, especially by their lower stellar mass and surface density. Multi-armed and grand-design galaxies are similar in most of their fundamental parameters, excluding some bar properties and the bulge-to-total luminosity ratio. Based on these results, we discuss dense, classical bulges as a necessary condition for standing spiral wave modes in grand-design galaxies. We further find a strong correlation between bulge-to-total ratio and bar contrast, and a weaker correlation between arm and bar contrasts.

Galaxies are observed to obey a strict set of dynamical scaling relations. We review these relations for rotationally supported disk galaxies spanning many decades in mass, surface brightness, and gas content. The behavior of these widely varied systems can be summarized with a handful of empirical laws connected by a common acceleration scale.

Evolution and the formation of bars in the galactic disks is studied in the context of Modified Gravity (MOG) by using N-body simulations. It is found that changing the value of free parameters of the model can effectively alter the strength of the bar and disk’s stability.