Search Publications
Vertical waves in the solar neighbourhood in Gaia DR2
Bovy, Jo; Bennett, Morgan
The vertical structure and dynamics of stars in our local Galactic neighbourhood contains much information about the local distribution of visible and dark matter and of perturbations to the Milky Way disc. We use data on the positions and velocities of stars in the solar neighbourhood from Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) and large spectroscopic surveys…
The total mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud from its perturbation on the Orphan stream
Li, T. S.; Evans, N. W.; Belokurov, V. +14 more
In a companion paper by Koposov et al., RR Lyrae from Gaia Data Release 2 are used to demonstrate that stars in the Orphan stream have velocity vectors significantly misaligned with the stream track, suggesting that it has received a large gravitational perturbation from a satellite of the Milky Way. We argue that such a mismatch cannot arise due …
The origin of accreted stellar halo populations in the Milky Way using APOGEE, Gaia, and the EAGLE simulations
Bovy, Jo; Majewski, Steven R.; Holtzman, Jon +12 more
Recent work indicates that the nearby Galactic halo is dominated by the debris from a major accretion event. We confirm that result from an analysis of APOGEE-DR14 element abundances and Gaia-DR2 kinematics of halo stars. We show that ∼2/3 of nearby halo stars have high orbital eccentricities (e ≳ 0.8), and abundance patterns typical of massive Mi…
juliet: a versatile modelling tool for transiting and non-transiting exoplanetary systems
Espinoza, Néstor; Kossakowski, Diana; Brahm, Rafael
Here we present juliet, a versatile tool for the analysis of transits, radial velocities, or both. juliet is built over many available tools for the modelling of transits, radial velocities, and stochastic processes (here modelled as Gaussian Processes; GPs) in order to deliver a tool/wrapper which can be used for the analysis of transit photometr…
Proper motions and dynamics of the Milky Way globular cluster system from Gaia DR2
Vasiliev, Eugene
We use Gaia Data Release 2 to determine the mean proper motions for 150 Milky Way globular clusters (almost the entire known population), with a typical uncertainty of 0.05 mas yr-1 limited mainly by systematic errors. Combining them with distance and line-of-sight velocity measurements from the literature, we analyse the distribution o…
The ASAS-SN catalogue of variable stars - II. Uniform classification of 412 000 known variables
Kochanek, C. S.; Stanek, K. Z.; Dong, Subo +12 more
The variable stars in the VSX catalogue are derived from a multitude of inhomogeneous data sources and classification tools. This inhomogeneity complicates our understanding of variable star types, statistics, and properties, and it directly affects attempts to build training sets for current (and next) generation all-sky, time-domain surveys. We …
Footprints of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy in the Gaia data set
Laporte, Chervin F. P.; Gómez, Facundo A.; Minchev, Ivan +1 more
We analyse an N-body simulation of the interaction of the Milky Way (MW) with a Sagittarius-like dSph (Sgr), looking for signatures which may be attributed to its orbital history in the phase space volume around the Sun in light of Gaia DR2 discoveries. The repeated impacts of Sgr excite coupled vertical and radial oscillations in the disc which q…
Probing Galactic haloes with fast radio bursts
Prochaska, J. Xavier; Zheng, Yong
The precise localization (<1 arcsec) of multiple fast radio bursts (FRBs) to z > 0.1 galaxies has confirmed that the dispersion measures (DMs) of these enigmatic sources afford a new opportunity to probe the diffuse ionized gas around and in between galaxies. In this manuscript, we examine the signatures of gas in dark matter haloes (aka hal…
Inferences on the timeline of reionization at z ∼ 8 from the KMOS Lens-Amplified Spectroscopic Survey
Fontana, Adriano; Pentericci, Laura; Schmidt, Kasper B. +12 more
Detections and non-detections of Lyman alpha (Lyα) emission from z > 6 galaxies (<1 Gyr after the big bang) can be used to measure the timeline of cosmic reionization. Of key interest to measuring reionization's mid-stages, but also increasing observational challenge, are observations at z > 7, where Lyα redshifts to near infra-red wavele…
A year in the life of GW 170817: the rise and fall of a structured jet from a binary neutron star merger
Troja, E.; Piro, L.; van Eerten, H. +6 more
We present the results of our year-long afterglow monitoring of GW 170817, the first binary neutron star merger detected by Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Advanced Virgo. New observations with the Australian Telescope Compact Array and the Chandra X-ray Telescope were used to constrain its late-time behavio…