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.

We analyze line-of-sight velocities of over 3000 halo K-giant stars from the second data release of the spectral survey LAMOST (Zhao et al. 2012). We find a nearly constant velocity dispersion profile, with no large dips or peaks, in a Galactocentric radial range of 10–30 kpc, in accord with earlier analyses (Battaglia et al. 2005, 2006; Xue et al. 2008, 2014) (see Fig. 1). Previous studies of halo star radial velocity dispersions in a reference frame centered on the Galactic Center have detected dips within this radial range (Sommer-Larsen et al. 1994; Kafle et al. 2012, 2014). We use the stars to make estimates of the enclosed mass out to 40 kpc from the Galactic Center using the method of Evans et al. (2011). Tens of thousands of such stars are expected to become available to this analysis by the end of the five-year survey.