Based on observational data from the fourth internal data release of the Gaia-ESO Survey we probe the abundance structure in the Milky Way stellar disk as a function of galactocentric radius and height above the plane. We find that the inner and outer Galactic disks have different chemical signatures. The stars in the inner Galactic disk show abundance signatures of both the thin and thick disks, while the stars in the outer Galactic disk resemble in majority the abundances seen in the thin disk. Assuming that the Galactic thick disk can be associated with the α-enriched population, this can be interpreted as that the thick disk density drops drastically beyond a galactocentric radius of about 10 kpc. This is in agreement with recent findings that the thick disk has a short scale-length, shorter than that of the the thin disk.

We derive the mean velocity components at various Galactocentric radii from 8 to 14 kpc using about 40,000 red clump stars observed in the LAMOST survey. We find that the vertical bulk motion for younger red clump stars are significantly larger than that for the older red clump stars. This is likely the kinematical feature of the Galactic warp around its line-of-node, which is located close to the Galactic anti-center region. It is evident that the warp are mainly contributed by the younger stars rather than the older stars. The age variation in the vertical kinematics favors a formation scenario where the Galactic warp is originated from infalling misaligned gas.

Observations of stellar streams in M31’s outer halo suggest that M31 is actively accreting several dwarf galaxies and their globular clusters (GCs). Detailed abundances can chemically link clusters to their birth environments, establishing whether or not a GC has been accreted from a satellite dwarf galaxy. This talk presents the detailed chemical abundances of seven M31 outer halo GCs (with projected distances from M31 greater than 30 kpc), as derived from high-resolution integrated-light spectra taken with the Hobby Eberly Telescope. Five of these clusters were recently discovered in the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS)—this talk presents the first determinations of integrated Fe, Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Ni, Ba, and Eu abundances for these clusters. Four of the target clusters (PA06, PA53, PA54, and PA56) are metal-poor ([Fe/H] < -1.5), α-enhanced (though they are possibly less alpha-enhanced than Milky Way stars at the 1 sigma level), and show signs of star-to-star Na and Mg variations. The other three GCs (H10, H23, and PA17) are more metal-rich, with metallicities ranging from [Fe/H] = -1.4 to -0.9. While H23 is chemically similar to Milky Way field stars, Milky Way GCs, and other M31 clusters, H10 and PA17 have moderately-low [Ca/Fe], compared to Milky Way field stars and clusters. Additionally, PA17’s high [Mg/Ca] and [Ba/Eu] ratios are distinct from Milky Way stars, and are in better agreement with the stars and clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). None of the clusters studied here can be conclusively linked to any of the identified streams from PAndAS; however, based on their locations, kinematics, metallicities, and detailed abundances, the most metal-rich PAndAS clusters H23 and PA17 may be associated with the progenitor of the Giant Stellar Stream, H10 may be associated with the SW Cloud, and PA53 and PA56 may be associated with the Eastern Cloud.

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.

As part of the Z-PAndAS Keck II DEIMOS survey of resolved stars in our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda (M31), we have built up a unique data set of measured velocities and chemistries for thousands of stars in the Andromeda stellar halo, particularly probing its rich and complex substructure. In this contribution, we will discuss the structural, dynamical and chemical properties of Andromeda's dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and how there is no observational evidence for a difference in the evolutionary histories of those found on and off M31's vast plane of satellites. We will also discuss a possible extension to the most significant merger event in M31 - the Giant Southern Stream - and how we can use this feature to refine our understanding of M31's mass profile, and its complex evolution.

The mid-infrared provides a unique view of galaxy stellar populations, sensitive to both the integrated light of old, low-mass stars and to individual dusty mass-losing stars. We present results from an extended Spitzer/IRAC survey of M31 with total lengths of 6.6 and 4.4 degrees along the major and minor axes, respectively. The integrated surface brightness profile proves to be surprisingly difficult to trace in the outskirts of the galaxy, but we can also investigate the disk/halo transition via a star count profile, with careful correction for foreground and background contamination. Our point-source catalog allows us to report on mid-infrared properties of individual objects in the outskirts of M31, via cross-correlation with PAndAS, WISE, and other catalogs.

We present the results from the state-of-the-art wide-field survey of the M81 galaxy group that we are conducting with Hyper Suprime-Cam on Subaru Telescope. Our photometry reaches about 2 mag below the tip of the red giant branch (RGB) and reveals the spatial distribution of both old and young stars over an area of 5°2 around the M81. The young main-sequence (MS) stars closely follow the HI distribution and can be found in a stellar stream between M81 and NGC 3077 and in numerous outlying stellar associations. Our survey also reveals for the first time the very extended (>2 × R25) halos of RGB stars around M81, M82, and NGC 3077, as well as faint tidal streams that link these systems. The gravitational interactions between M81, M82 and NGC 3077 galaxies induced star formation in tidally stripped gas, and also significantly perturbed the older stellar components leading to disturbed halo morphologies.

Local Group galaxies are important targets since their stellar populations can be resolved, and their properties can be investigated in detail with the help of stellar evolutionary models. The newly-built instrument for the 8.2m Subaru Telescope, Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC), which has a 1 Giga pixel CCD camera with 1.5 degrees field of view, is the best instrument for observing Local Group galaxies. We have carried out a survey for Local Group dwarf galaxies using HSC aiming to shed light on the outskirts of these galaxies. The survey covers target galaxies out beyond the tidal radii down to a depth unexplored by previous surveys. Thanks to the high spatial resolution and high sensitivity provided by the Subaru Telescope, we are able to investigate properties such as spatial distribution and stellar population from the very center of galaxies to the outskirts. In this article, I will show results for the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822 and the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Ursa Minor.

Understanding the properties of dwarf galaxies is important not only to put them in their proper cosmological context, but also to understand the formation and evolution of the most common type of galaxies. Dwarf galaxies are divided into two main classes, dwarf irregulars (dIrrs) and dwarf spheroidals (dSphs), which differ from each other mainly because the former are gas-rich objects currently forming stars, while the latter are gas-deficient with no on-going star formation. Transition types (dT) are thought to represent dIs in the process of losing their gas, and can therefore shed light into the possible process of dwarf irregulars (dIrrs) becoming gas-deficient, passively evolving galaxies. Here we present preliminary results from our wide-area VLT/FORS2 MXU spectroscopic survey of the Phoenix dT, from which we obtained line-of-sight velocities and metallicities from the nIR Ca II triplet lines for a large sample of individual Red Giant Branch stars.

We report the results of new survey of star-forming regions in the outer Galaxy at Galactocentric radius of more than 13.5 kpc, where the environment is significantly different from that in the solar neighborhood.

Outskirts of spiral galaxies, including our own, and dwarf irregular galaxies are known to have a different environment from the solar neighborhood, e.g., low metallicities ( ~ − 1 dex). Among them, the outer Galaxy is the closest and hence is so far the only site suitable for population studies of resolved stars on the same basis as solar neighborhood. We have obtained NIR images of young clusters in the outer Galaxy, using the Subaru 8.2-m telescope, and clearly resolved cluster members with mass detection limits of ~ 0.1 M ⊙. Based on the fitting of K-band luminosity functions (KLFs) for four clusters, we found that the initial mass function (IMF) in the outer Galaxy is consistent with that in the solar neighborhood in terms of the high-mass slope and IMF peak. Upcoming observations with a higher spatial resolution and sensitivity, using JWST, TMT, etc., will allow us to extend spatially-resolved studies of the IMF to Local Group galaxies.

We introduce a novel approach to interpreting the well-known spatial correlation of gas densities with on-going star formation. Treated as a closed-loop process involving two physically distinct phases the data can be subdivided into regions that are active and those that are quiescent. The active regions can be distinguished by the presence of high-mass, short-lived, but recently-formed OB stars; the quiescent regions are marked by an absence of these stars and they are considered to be recovering from the last star-formation event and are re-collapsing. The relative (areal) frequencies of those two phases are directly proportional to the relative timescales. For four Local Group galaxies, NGC 6822, the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds, and M33, the cloud assembly/collapse timescales are all found to be monotonically decreasing power-law functions of density, with as yet to be explained differences.

Recently it has been shown by Ibata et al. (2013) that a large fraction of the dwarf satellite galaxies found in the PAndAS survey (McConnachie et al. 2009) and orbiting the Andromeda galaxy are surprisingly aligned in a thin, extended, and kinematically coherent planar structure. The presence of such a structure seems to challenge the current Cold Dark Matter paradigm of structure formation (Ibata et al. 2014, Pawlowski et al. 2014), which predicts a more uniform distribution of satellites around central objects. We show that it is possible to obtain a thin, extended, rotating plane of satellites resembling the one in Andromeda in cosmological collisionless simulations based on this model. Our new 21 high-resolution simulations (see Buck et al. 2015) show a correlation between the formation time of the dark matter halo and the thickness of the plane of satellites. Our simulations have a high incidence of satellite planes as thin, extended, and as rich as the one in Andromeda and with a very coherent kinematic structure when we select early forming haloes. By tracking the formation of the satellites in the plane we show that they have mainly been accreted onto the main object along thin dark matter filaments at high redshift (Dekel et al. 2009, Libeskind et al. 2009, 2011). Our results show that the presence of a thin, extended, rotating plane of satellites is not a challenge for the Cold Dark Matter paradigm, but actually supports one of the predictions of this paradigm related to the presence of filaments of dark matter around galaxies at high redshift.

In a series of papers, we have performed N-body simulations of a galaxy collision to reproduce the observed shape, kinematics, and metallicity distribution of a giant stellar stream and shell-like structures in the halo of Andromeda galaxy (M31).

Models of galaxy formation in a hierarchical universe predict substantial scatter in the halo-to-halo stellar properties, owing to stochasticity in galaxies’ merger histories. Currently, only few detailed observations of galaxy’s halos are available, mainly for the Milky Way and M31. The Galaxy Halos, Outer disks, Substructure, Thick disks and Star clusters (GHOSTS) HST survey is the largest study to date of the resolved stellar populations in the outskirts of disk galaxies and its observations offer a direct test of model predictions. Here we present the results we obtain for six highly inclined nearby Milky Way-mass spiral galaxies. We find a great diversity in the properties of their stellar halos.

We report a recent result of the FUGIN project, a Galactic plane CO survey using the Nobeyama 45-m Telescope and the FOREST receiver. In the third galactic quadrant, 42 square degrees are observed and 4752 molecular clouds are detected. Among them, 12 clouds are located at R (distance from the Galactic center) > 16 kpc. Molecular clouds at R < 16 kpc trace the Local, Perseus, and Outer arms.

Faint dwarf galaxies such as those found around the Milky Way (MW) display the largest known dynamical mass-to-light ratios (up to several 100s M⊙/L⊙). However, tidal interaction with the MW may impact the dynamical equilibrium in the outer parts of some of these objects, and partly affect the derived dynamical M/L. Assessing this is crucial for the study of the dark matter content of these galaxies. A clear sign of ongoing tidal disturbance would be the presence of tidal tails. These are expected to be low surface brightness features, hence difficult to detect from star counts in systems where contamination is also present, e.g. from foreground MW stars. At present we have searched for these sorts of tidal features in the Sextans dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph), by adopting the Matched Filter Method (e.g. Rockosi et al. 2002), a very efficient technique to decontaminate stellar density maps with a high ratio of contamination versus source density (dwarf galaxies outer regions or ultra faint dwarf galaxies). We also calculate structural parameters from the position of stars without requiring spatial binning (Richardson et al. 2011), through a Bayesian MCMC (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013).

Andromeda XXVII is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy in the outskirts of the Andromeda galaxy (M31). It appears to be dissolving in to the Northern arc of M31, and could be the remnant of a strong tidal disruption. In the upcoming months, our spectroscopic program, which has measured velocities for multiple stars within both the dwarf galaxy progenitor and its stream (using the Keck II DEIMOS telescope, as part of the PAndAS survey), will determine velocity dispersions, scale radii and metallicities of both the dwarf and the stream. This in turn may enable us to ascertain the progenitor mass profile and determine whether it is cusped or cored.

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.

We present a comprehensive photometric study of the Fornax and the Andromeda II dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies. It is based on the up-to-date deepest photometric data for both galaxies. We have derived their detailed star formation histories (SFHs) as a function of galactocentric radius. This allowed us to analyze in detail the spatial distribution of their different stellar populations.