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The Milky Way's (MW) inner stellar halo contains an [Fe/H]-rich component with highly eccentric orbits, often referred to as the 'last major merger.' Hypotheses for the origin of this component include Gaia -Sausage/Enceladus (GSE), where the progenitor collided with the MW proto-disc 8–11 Gyr ago, and the Virgo Radial Merger (VRM), where the progenitor collided with the MW disc within the last 3 Gyr. These two scenarios make different predictions about observable structure in local phase space, because the morphology of debris depends on how long it has had to phase mix. The recently identified phase-space folds in Gaia DR3 have positive caustic velocities, making them fundamentally different than the phase-mixed chevrons found in simulations at late times. Roughly 20 per cent of the stars in the prograde local stellar halo are associated with the observed caustics. Based on a simple phase-mixing model, the observed number of caustics are consistent with a merger that occurred 1–2 Gyr ago. We also compare the observed phase-space distribution to FIRE-2 Latte simulations of GSE-like mergers, using a quantitative measurement of phase mixing (2D causticality). The observed local phase-space distribution best matches the simulated data 1–2 Gyr after collision, and certainly not later than 3 Gyr. This is further evidence that the progenitor of the 'last major merger' did not collide with the MW proto-disc at early times, as is thought for the GSE, but instead collided with the MW disc within the last few Gyr, consistent with the body of work surrounding the VRM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We fit the mass and radial profile of the Orphan–Chenab Stream's (OCS) dwarf-galaxy progenitor by using turnoff stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Camera to constrain N-body simulations of the OCS progenitor falling into the Milky Way on the 1.5 PetaFLOPS MilkyWay@home distributed supercomputer. We infer the internal structure of the OCS's progenitor under the assumption that it was a spherically symmetric dwarf galaxy composed of a stellar system embedded in an extended dark matter halo. We optimize the evolution time, the baryonic and dark matter scale radii, and the baryonic and dark matter masses of the progenitor using a differential evolution algorithm. The likelihood score for each set of parameters is determined by comparing the simulated tidal stream to the angular distribution of OCS stars observed in the sky. We fit the total mass of the OCS's progenitor to (2.0 ± 0.3) × 107M⊙ with a mass-to-light ratio of γ = 73.5 ± 10.6 and (1.1 ± 0.2) × 106M⊙ within 300 pc of its center. Within the progenitor's half-light radius, we estimate a total mass of (4.0 ± 1.0) × 105M⊙. We also fit the current sky position of the progenitor's remnant to be (α, δ) = ((166.0 ± 0.9)°, (−11.1 ± 2.5)°) and show that it is gravitationally unbound at the present time. The measured progenitor mass is on the low end of previous measurements and, if confirmed, lowers the mass range of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies. Our optimization assumes a fixed Milky Way potential, OCS orbit, and radial profile for the progenitor, ignoring the impact of the Large Magellanic Cloud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We fit the mass and radial profile of the Orphanâ€"Chenab Stream’s (OCS) dwarf-galaxy progenitor by using turnoff stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Dark Energy Camera to constrain N -body simulations of the OCS progenitor falling into the Milky Way on the 1.5 PetaFLOPS MilkyWay@home distributed supercomputer. We infer the internal structure of the OCS’s progenitor under the assumption that it was a spherically symmetric dwarf galaxy composed of a stellar system embedded in an extended dark matter halo. We optimize the evolution time, the baryonic and dark matter scale radii, and the baryonic and dark matter masses of the progenitor using a differential evolution algorithm. The likelihood score for each set of parameters is determined by comparing the simulated tidal stream to the angular distribution of OCS stars observed in the sky. We fit the total mass of the OCS’s progenitor to (2.0 ± 0.3) Ă— 107 M ⊙ with a mass-to-light ratio of Îł = 73.5 ± 10.6 and (1.1 ± 0.2) Ă— 106 M ⊙ within 300 pc of its center. Within the progenitor’s half-light radius, we estimate a total mass of (4.0 ± 1.0) Ă— 105 M ⊙. We also fit the current sky position of the progenitor’s remnant to be (α, δ) = ((166.0 ± 0.9)°, (âˆ'11.1 ± 2.5)°) and show that it is gravitationally unbound at the present time. The measured progenitor mass is on the low end of previous measurements and, if confirmed, lowers the mass range of ultrafaint dwarf galaxies. Our optimization assumes a fixed Milky Way potential, OCS orbit, and radial profile for the progenitor, ignoring the impact of the Large Magellanic Cloud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the second Gaia data release (DR2) and APOGEE (DR16) spectroscopic surveys, we define two kinds of star samples: high-velocity thick disk (HVTD) with vϕ > 90 km s−1 and metal-rich stellar halo (MRSH) with vϕ < 90 km s−1. Due to high-resolution spectra data from APOGEE (DR16), we can accurately analyze the element abundance distribution of HVTD and MRSH. These element abundances constitute a multidimensional data space, and we introduce an algorithm method for processing multidimensional data to give the result of dimensionality reduction clustering. According to chemical property analysis, we derive that some HVTD stars could originate from the thin disk and some MRSH stars could originate from dwarf galaxies, but those stars that have similar chemical abundance characteristics in both samples may form in situ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars are commonly used to trace halo substructure, the stars bluer than (g − r) < −0.3 are ignored owing to the difficulty in determining their absolute magnitudes. The blue extension of the horizontal branch (HBX) includes BHB tail stars and extreme horizontal branch (EHB) stars. We present a method for identifying HBX stars in the field, using spectra and photometry from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 14 (SDSS DR14). We derive an estimate for the absolute magnitudes of BHB tail and EHB stars as a function of color and use this relationship to calculate distances. We identify an overdensity of HBX stars that appears to trace the northern end of the Hercules-Aquila Cloud. We identify three stars that are likely part of a tidal stream, but this is not enough stars to explain the observed overdensity. Combining SDSS data with Gaia DR2 proper motions allows us to show that the majority of the HBX stars in the overdensity are on high-eccentricity orbits similar to those in the Virgo Radial Merger/Gaia–Enceladus/Gaia Sausage structure and that the overdensity of high-eccentricity orbits extends all the way to the Virgo Overdensity. We use stellar kinematics to separate the HBX stars into disk stars and halo stars. The halo stars are primarily on highly eccentric (radial) orbits. The fraction of HBX stars that are EHBs is highest in the disk population and lowest in the low-eccentricity halo stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the second Gaia data release (DR2), combined with the LAMOST and APOGEE spectroscopic surveys, we study the kinematics and metallicity distribution of the high-velocity stars that have a relative speed of at least 220 with respect to the local standard of rest in the Galaxy. The rotational velocity distribution of the high-velocity stars with [Fe/H] dex can be well described by a two-Gaussian model, with peaks at and , associated with the thick disk and halo, respectively. This implies that there should exist a high-velocity thick disk (HVTD) and a metal-rich stellar halo (MRSH) in the Galaxy. The HVTD stars have the same position as the halo in the Toomre diagram but show the same rotational velocity and metallicity as the canonical thick disk. The MRSH stars have basically the same rotational velocity, orbital eccentricity, and position in the Lindblad and Toomre diagram as the canonical halo stars, but they are more metal-rich. Furthermore, the metallicity distribution function of our sample stars are well fitted by a four-Gaussian model, associated with the outer halo, inner halo, MRSH, and HVTD, respectively. Chemical and kinematic properties and age imply that the MRSH and HVTD stars may form in situ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identify shell structures in the Milky Way for the first time. We find two shells in the Virgo Overdensity region and two shells in the Hercules Aquila Cloud region using Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Gaia, and LAMOST data. These shell stars are a subset of the substructure previously identified as the Virgo Radial Merger (VRM). Timing arguments for these shells indicate that their progenitor dwarf galaxy passed through the Galactic center 2.7 ± 0.2 Gyr ago. Based on the time of collision, it is also possible that the VRM is related to the phenomenon that created phase-space spirals in the vertical motion of the disk and/or the Splash and could have caused a burst of star formation in the inner disk. We analyze phase mixing in a collection of radial merger N-body simulations and find that shell structure similar to that observed in Milky Way data disappears by 5 Gyr after collision with the Galactic center. The method used to calculate the merger time of the VRM was able to reliably recover the correct merger times for these simulations. Previous work supports the idea that the VRM and the Gaia Sausage/Gaia–Enceladus Merger are the same. However, the Gaia Sausage is widely believed to be 8–11 Gyr old. The disparate ages could be reconciled if the larger age is associated with an infall time when the progenitor crossed the virial radius; we do not constrain the time at which the progenitor became bound to the Milky Way. Alternatively, the Gaia Sausage could be younger than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use the second Gaia data release (Gaia DR2), combined with Radial Velocity Experiment spectroscopic surveys, to identify the substructures in the nearby stellar halo. We select 3845 halo stars kinematically and chemically and determine their density distribution in energy and angular momentum space. To select the substructures from overdensities, we reshuffle the velocities and estimate their significance. Two statistically significant substructures, GR-1 and GR-2, are identified. GR-1 has a high binding energy and small z-angular momentum. GR-2 is metal-rich but retrograde. They are both new substructures, and may be accretion debris of dwarf galaxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the serendipitous discovery of a stellar stream in the constellation Pegasus in the south Galactic hemisphere. The stellar stream was detected using the SDSS Data Release 14 by means of a matched filter in the colour–magnitude diagram that is optimized for a stellar population that is 8 Gyr old with [Fe/H] = −0.46 dex, and located at heliocentric distance of 18 kpc. The candidate stream is faint (turn-off point at r 0 ∼ 19.6), sparse and barely visible in SDSS photometry. It is also detected in the (shallower) Pan-STARRs data. The residual stellar density in the (u − g)0, (g − r)0 colour–colour diagram gives the same estimate for the age and [Fe/H] of this stellar population. The stream is located at a Galactic coordinates (l, b) = (79.4°, −24.6°) and extends over 9° (2.5 kpc), with a width of 112 pc. The narrow width suggests a globular cluster progenitor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The radial number density and flattening of the Milky Way's stellar halo is measured with 5351 metal-poor ([Fe/H]<-1) K giants from The Large sky Area Multi-Object fiber Spectroscopic Telescope Data Release 3 (LAMOST DR3), using a non-parametric 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 and 0.96 at r = 15, 20 and 30 kpc (where r = √ R2 + [Z/q (r)]2), respectively. Moreover, the leading arm of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy tidal stream in the north, and the trailing arm in the south, is significant in the residual map of density distribution. In addition, an uAnknown overdensity is identified in the residual map at (R, Z) = (30, 15) kpc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We trace the Cetus Polar Stream (CPS) with blue horizontal branch and red giant stars from Data Release 8 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Using a larger data set than was available previously, we are able to refine the measured distance and velocity to this tidal debris star stream in the south Galactic cap. Assuming that the tidal debris traces the progenitor's orbit, we fit an orbit to the CPS and find that the stream is confined between ∼24 and 36 kpc on a rather polar orbit inclined 87° to the Galactic plane. The eccentricity of the orbit is 0.20, and the period is ∼700 Myr. If we instead matched N-body simulations to the observed tidal debris, these orbital parameters would change by 10% or less. The CPS stars travel in the opposite direction to those from the Sagittarius tidal stream in the same region of the sky. Through N-body models of satellites on the best-fitting orbit, and assuming that mass follows light, we show that the stream width, line-of-sight depth, and velocity dispersion imply a progenitor of ≳ 108M☼. However, the density of stars along the stream requires either a disruption time on the order of one orbit or a stellar population that is more centrally concentrated than the dark matter. We suggest that an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy progenitor could reproduce a large stream width and velocity dispersion without requiring a very recent deflection of the progenitor into its current orbit. We find that most Cetus stars have metallicities of –2.5 < [Fe/H] <–2.0, similar to the observed metallicities of the ultrafaint dwarfs. Our simulations suggest that the parameters of the dwarf galaxy progenitors, including their dark matter content, could be constrained by observations of their tidal tails through comparison of the debris with N-body simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MilkyWay@home is a volunteer computing project that allows people from every country in the world to volunteer their otherwise idle processors to Milky Way research. Currently, more than 25,000 people (150,000 since November 9, 2007) contribute about half a PetaFLOPS of computing power to our project. We currently run two types of applications: one application fits the spatial density profile of tidal streams using statistical photometric parallax, and the other application finds the N-body simulation parameters that produce tidal streams that best match the measured density profile of known tidal streams. The stream fitting application is well developed and is producing published results. The Sagittarius dwarf leading tidal tail has been fit, and the algorithm is currently running on the trailing tidal tail and bifurcated pieces. We will soon have a self-consistent model for the density of the smooth component of the stellar halo and the largest tidal streams. The N-body application has been implemented for fitting dwarf galaxy progenitor properties only, and is in the testing stages. We use an Earth-Mover Distance method to measure goodness-of-fit for density of stars along the tidal stream. We will add additional spatial dimensions as well as kinematic measures in a piecemeal fashion, with the eventual goal of fitting the orbit and parameters of the Milky Way potential (and thus the density distribution of dark matter) using multiple tidal streams. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In determining the distances to stars within the Milky Way galaxy, one often uses photometric or spectroscopic parallaxes. In these methods, the type of each individual star is determined, and the absolute magnitude of that star type is compared with the measured apparent magnitude to determine individual distances. In this paper, we define the term statistical photometric parallax, in which statistical knowledge of the absolute magnitudes of stellar populations is used to determine the underlying density distributions of those stars. This technique has been used to determine the density distribution of the Milky Way's stellar halo and its component tidal streams, using very large samples of stars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Most recently, the volunteer computing platform MilkyWay@home has been used to find the best-fitting model parameters for the density of these halo stars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A new moving group comprising at least four blue horizontal branch (BHB) stars is identified at ). The horizontal branch at mag implies a distance of 50 kpc from the Sun. The heliocentric radial velocity is km s−1, corresponding to km s−1; the dispersion in line-of-sight velocity is consistent with the instrumental errors for these stars. The mean metallicity of the moving group is [Fe/H] , which is significantly more metal poor than the stellar spheroid. We estimate that the BHB stars in the outer halo have a mean metallicity of [Fe/H] , with a wide scatter and a distribution that does not change much as a function of distance from the Sun. We explore the systematics of Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 surface gravity metallicity determinations for faint BHB stars, and present a technique for estimating the significance of clumps discovered in multidimensional data. This Hercules Corona Borealis stream cannot be distinguished in density, and highlights the need to collect many more spectra of Galactic stars to unravel the merger history of the Galaxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An oscillating vertical displacement of the Milky Way, with a wavelength of about 8 kpc and and amplitude of about 100 pc (increasing with distance from the Galactic center) is observed towards the Galactic anticenter. These oscillations are thought to be the result of disk perturbations from dwarf satellites of the Milky Way. They explain the Monoceros Ring and could be related to Milky Way spiral structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We present a support vector machine classifier to identify the K giant stars from the LAMOST survey directly using their spectral line features. The completeness of the identification is about 75% for tests based on LAMOST stellar parameters. The contamination in the identified K giant sample is lower than 2.5%. Applying the classification method to about two million LAMOST spectra observed during the pilot survey and the first year survey, we select 298,036 K giant candidates. The metallicities of the sample are also estimated with an uncertainty of 0.13 ∼ 0.29 dex based on the equivalent widths of Mgb and iron lines. A Bayesian method is then developed to estimate the posterior probability of the distance for the K giant stars, based on the estimated metallicity and 2MASS photometry. The synthetic isochrone-based distance estimates have been calibrated using 7 globular clusters with a wide range of metallicities. The uncertainty of the estimated distance modulus at K = 11 mag, which is the median brightness of the K giant sample, is about 0.6 mag, corresponding to ∼30% in distance. As a scientific verification case, the trailing arm of the Sagittarius stream is clearly identified with the selected K giant sample. Moreover, at about 80 kpc from the Sun, we use our K giant stars to confirm a detection of stream members near the apo-center of the trailing tail. These rediscoveries of the features of the Sagittarius stream illustrate the potential of the LAMOST survey for detecting substructures in the halo of the Milky Way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We confirm that there are at least three separate low-latitude overdensities of blue F turnoff stars near the Milky Way anti-center: the Monoceros Ring, the Anti-Center Stream (ACS), and the Eastern Banded Structure (EBS). There might also be a small number of normal thick disk stars at the same location. The ACS is a tilted component that extends to higher Galactic latitude at lower Galactic longitude, 10 kpc from the Sun toward the anti-center. It has a sharp cutoff on the high-latitude side. Distance, velocity, and proper motion measurements are consistent with previous orbit fits. The mean metallicity is [Fe/H] =–0.96 ± 0.03, which is lower than the thick disk and Monoceros Ring. The Monoceros Ring is a higher density substructure that is present at 15° < b < 22° at all longitudes probed in this survey. The structure likely continues toward lower latitudes. The distances are consistent with a constant distance from the Galactic center of 17.6 kpc. The mean line-of-sight velocity of the structure is consistent with a thick disk rotation. However, the velocity dispersion of these stars is ∼15 km s–1 and the metallicity is [Fe/H] =–0.80 ± 0.01. Both of these quantities are lower than the canonical thick disk. We suggest that this ring structure is likely different from the thick disk, though its association with the disk cannot be definitively ruled out. The EBS is detected primarily photometrically, near (l, b) = (225°, 30°), at a distance of 10.9 kpc from the Sun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]