Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies

Start year
1994
End year
2021
Organizational Unit

Grants related:

    General
    Description

    The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis that they are a good representation of the general population of galaxies in the Universe.

    The project can be divided in four research lines:

    I. Star formation history in the Local Group.

    The goal is to characterise the spatial and temporal structure of the galaxies of the Local Group through the observations of individual stars. The fundamental aim is to derive the detailed star formation history (SFH) of a given galaxy in all its evolutionary stages, in order to determine the impact of cosmological (e.g. reionization, self-shielding) and local processes (e.g. gas sweeping by supernovas, tidal forces, stellar migration).

    II. Multiple stellar populations in globular clusters.

    At odds of what it is classically predicted, there is evidence that globular clusters (GC) host more than one stellar population with different chemical composition. HST photometric observations of GC show strong evidence of multiple main sequences in the CMDs. The aim of this line is to characterise the aforementioned multiple populations in GC.

    III. Structure and formation of the Milky Way.

    The main purpose of this research line is to study the Milky Way via by using GAIA data (spacebased), and the ESO-VVV survey (Vista Telescope). These data are going to provide a perfect opportunity to study the star formation history of the Galactic disk and bulge. In order to use GAIA and VVV data we need to adapt the tools developed by our group to study stellar populations.

    IV. Stellar evolution and synthetic color-magnitude diagram.

    We have developed a new stellar evolutionary library. There is the need in the scientific community to increase the reliability and accuracy in the stellar models computation using the most updated results in Physics, such as the equation of state, new opacities, and nuclear sections.

    Milestones

    1. Development of the web site http://basti-iac.oa-teramo.inaf.it for the BaSTI stellar evolution library
    2. Obtention of near-infrared PSF photometry of the full VVV disk region (220 sq. deg between 294.7° ≤ l ≤ 350.0° and |b| ≤ 2.25°) in J and Ks bands
    3. Computation of a open access data base of "cromosomic maps" for all the object of the "HST Legacy Project on Globular Clusters".
    4. Determination of the star formation history of three Ultra-fain Dwarfs (UFD): Bootes I, Canes Venatici II y Leo IV

    Related publications

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      We have conducted long-slit spectroscopic observations and analyzed archival radio data for the ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) NGC 4861 X-1. Our spectral line analysis unveils NGC 4861 X-1 as the fourth ULX situated within an X-ray photoionized nebula, following three previous findings made approximately two decades ago. Remarkably, we discover

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    • Internal kinematics of dwarf satellites of MW/M31-like galaxies in TNG50

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    • Panning for gold, but finding helium: Discovery of the ultra-stripped supernova SN 2019wxt from gravitational-wave follow-up observations

      We present the results from multi-wavelength observations of a transient discovered during an intensive follow-up campaign of S191213g, a gravitational wave (GW) event reported by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration as a possible binary neutron star merger in a low latency search. This search yielded SN 2019wxt, a young transient in a galaxy whose sky

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    • Limited impact of jet-induced feedback in the multi-phase nuclear interstellar medium of 4C12.50

      Context. 4C12.50 (IRAS 13451+1232) at z = 0.122 is an ultraluminous infared radio galaxy that has often been proposed as a prime candidate for the link between ultraluminous infared galaxies and young radio galaxies. It is also an interesting target to investigate whether and how radio-induced feedback affects the evolution of galaxies in the early

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    • Mass Models of the Milky Way and Estimation of Its Mass from the Gaia DR3 Data Set

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    • The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XXIV. Differences in Internal Kinematics of Multiple Stellar Populations

      Our understanding of the kinematic properties of multiple stellar populations (mPOPs) in Galactic globular clusters (GCs) is still limited compared to what we know about their chemical and photometric characteristics. Such limitation arises from the lack of a comprehensive observational investigation of this topic. Here we present the first

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    • Evidence for Population-dependent Vertical Motions and the Long-lived Nonsteady Lopsided Milky Way Warp

      We present a Galactic disk vertical velocity analysis using OB type stars (OB stars), red clump (RC) stars, and main-sequence turnoff (MSTO) stars with different average age populations crossmatched with LAMOST DR5 and Gaia DR3. We show that the vertical velocities of the three populations clearly vary with the Galactocentric distance (R) and the

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    • Mapping the Milky Way Disk with Gaia DR3: 3D Extended Kinematic Maps and Rotation Curve to ≈30 kpc

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    • Tidally induced velocity gradients in the Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellites

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    • EMIR, the near-infrared camera and multi-object spectrograph for the GTC. EMIR at GTC

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    • Analysing the structure of the bulge with Mira variables

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    • StraKLIP: A Novel Pipeline for Detection and Characterization of Close-in Faint Companions through the Karhunen-Loéve Image Processing Algorithm

      We present a new pipeline developed to detect and characterize faint astronomical companions at small angular separation from the host star using sets of wide-field imaging observations not specifically designed for high-contrast imaging analysis. The core of the pipeline relies on Karhunen-Loéve truncated transformation of the reference point

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    • The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XXIII. Proper-motion Catalogs and Internal Kinematics

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    • Warp and flare of the Galactic disc revealed with supergiants by Gaia EDR3

      Context. The outer Galactic disc contains some features such as the warp and flare, whose origin is still debated. The Gaia data provide an excellent opportunity to probe the Galactic disc at large distances and study these features. Aims: We derive the density distributions of the average (old) whole population and the supergiants (representative

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    • Detection of Gravitational Redshift in Open Cluster Nondegenerate Stars

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    • SEGUE-2: Old Milky Way Stars Near and Far

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    • Internal rotation of Milky Way dwarf spheroidal satellites with Gaia Early Data Release 3

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    • Constraining the solar neighbourhood age-metallicity relation from white dwarf-main sequence binaries

      The age-metallicity relation (AMR) is a fundamental tool for constraining the chemical evolution of the Galactic disc. In this work, we analyse the observational properties of this relation using binary stars that have not interacted consisting of a white dwarf (WD) - from which we can derive the total age of the system - and a main sequence (MS)

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    • Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950

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    • The Cluster HEritage project with XMM-Newton: Mass Assembly and Thermodynamics at the Endpoint of structure formation. I. Programme overview

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