EXTINCTION MAPS TOWARD THE MILKY WAY BULGE: TWO-DIMENSIONAL AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL TESTS WITH APOGEE

Red clump (RC) stars are one of the best stellar tracers of the structure of the Milky Way (MW) bulge. Here we report a new view of the double RC through luminosity and color distributions of RC stars in nine bulge fields (l = 0.0°, ±4.5°; b = −6.0°, −7.5°, −9.0°) from the Blanco DECam Bulge Survey (BDBS), which covers near-ultraviolet to near-infrared bandpasses. The bright and faint RCs show contrasting distributions in (u − g)0 and (u − i)0 colors but similar distributions in (J − Ks)0 with a variation depending on the Galactic longitude, where the bright RC is typically redder than the faint RC. In particular, the RC stars are clearly divided into the bluer and redder populations when using the (u − g)0 color ((u − g)0 < 2.5 for the bluer RC; (u − g)0 ≥ 2.5 for the redder RC). The bluer stars show a single clump on the faint RC regime, whereas the redder stars form double clumps on both the bright and faint RCs. The bright clump of the redder stars is dominant in the positive longitude fields, while the faint clump of those red stars is significant at negative longitudes. We also confirm that the bluer and redder stars have different peak metallicity through comparison with spectroscopy (Δ[Fe/H] ∼ 0.45 dex). Therefore, our results support a scenario whereby the MW bulge is composed of a spheroid of metal-poor stars and a boxy/peanut shape (X-shape) predominantly made up of metal-rich stars.

Context. Globular clusters (GCs) in the Milky Way (MW) bulge are very difficult to study for the following reasons: (i) they suffer from the severe crowding and Galactic extinction, which are characteristic of these inner Galactic regions; (ii) they are more prone to the effects of dynamical processes. Therefore, they are relatively faint and difficult to map. However, deep, near-infrared photometry like that provided by the VISTA variables in the Via Láctea Extended Survey (VVVX) allows us to map GCs in this crucial yet relatively uncharted region. Aims. Our main goals are to study the true nature of the GC candidates FSR 19 and FSR 25 and measure their physical parameters. Methods. We used the near-infrared VVVX database, in combination with the Two Micron All Sky Survey and Gaia EDR3 proper motions (PMs) and photometry to study ages, metallicities, distances, reddening, mean PMs, sizes, and integrated luminosities for FSR 19 and FSR 25. A robust combination of selection criteria allowed us to effectively clean interlopers among our samples. Results. Our results confirm with a high level of confidence that both FSR 19 and FSR 25 are genuine MW bulge GCs. Each of the performed tests and resulting parameters provide clear evidence of the GC nature of these targets. We derive distances of 7.2 ± 0.7 kpc and D = 7.0 ± 0.6 (corresponding to distance moduli of 14.29 ± 0.08 and 14.23 ± 0.07) for FSR 19 and FSR 25, respectively. Their ages and metallicities are 11 Gyr and [Fe/H] = −0.5 dex for both clusters, which were determined from Dartmouth and PARSEC isochrone fitting. The integrated luminosities are MKs(FSR 19) = −7.72 mag and MKs(FSR 25) = −7.31 mag, which places them in the faint tail of the GC luminosity function. By adopting a King profile for their number distribution, we determine their core and tidal radii (rc, rt). For FSR 19, rc = 2.76 ± 0.36 pc and rt = 5.31 ± 0.49 pc, while FSR 25 appears more extended with rc = 1.92 ± 0.59 pc and rt = 6.85 ± 1.78 pc. Finally, their mean GC PMs (from Gaia EDR3) are μα* = −2.50 ± 0.76 mas yr−1, μδ = −5.02 ± 0.47 mas yr−1 for FSR 19 and μα* = −2.61 ± 1.27 mas yr−1, μδ = −5.23 ± 0.74 mas yr−1 for FSR 25. Conclusion. We demonstrate and confirm, based on the measured astrophysical parameters, that the two target clusters are indeed genuine and of low luminosity relatively metal-rich old GCs in the bulge of the MW.

In this paper, we present a multiwavelength analysis of the complex stellar populations within the massive globular cluster Mayall II (G1), a satellite of the nearby Andromeda galaxy projected at a distance of 40 kpc. We used images collected with the Hubble Space Telescope in UV, blue and optical filters to explore the multiple stellar populations hosted by G1. The mF438W versus mF438W − mF606W colour–magnitude diagram shows a significant spread of the red giant branch, that divides 1 mag brighter than the red clump. A possible explanation is the presence of two populations with different iron abundance or different C+N+O content, or different helium content, or a combination of the three causes. A similar red giant branch split is observed also for the Galactic globular cluster NGC 6388. Our multiwavelength analysis gives also the definitive proof that G1 hosts stars located on an extended blue horizontal branch. The horizontal branch of G1 exhibits similar morphology as those of NGC 6388 and NGC 6441, which host stellar populations with extreme helium abundance (Y > 0.33). As a consequence, we suggest that G1 may also exhibit large star-to-star helium variations.

The puzzling existence of Blue Straggler Stars (BSSs) implies that they must form in relatively recent events, after the majority of the constituent globular cluster (GC) stellar population was formed. In this thesis we compile a large set of independent work to help understand the formation of BSSs. In Chapter 2 we present new proper-motion cleaned BSS catalogs in 38 Milky Way GCs based on multi-passband and multi-epoch treasury survey data from the Hubble Space Telescope. We study the accuracy of our proper motion measurements using estimates of central velocity dispersions and find very good agreement with previous studies in the literature. Finally, we present a homogeneous BSS selection method, that expands the classic BSS selection parameter space to more evolved BSS evolutionary stages. In Chapter 3 we present the largest ever data set of velocity dispersion profiles of BSSs, which confirm that BSSs are populations that have been greatly affected by two-body relaxation, as it has been previously expected based on basic equipartition principles. In addition, we show from photometric BSS mass estimates that there is a striking correlation between the average BSS mass and the cluster dynamical age. We relate the measured proper-motion velocity dispersions with the photometric BSS mass estimates and use them to propose a novel interpretation of BSS CMDs and its relationship with the binary-evolution and dynamical formation channels. In Chapter 4 we present the first dynamical study of BSSs in three galactic GCs: NGC 3201, NGC 5139 (ωCen), and NGC 6218. We measure the v sin(i) values of the sample BSSs and find their distribution functions peaked at slow velocities with a long tail towards fast velocities in each globular cluster. We find that the BSSs in each of the GC sample which show vsin(i)>70 km s−1 are all found in the central cluster regions. In all globular clusters we find rapidly rotating BSSs that have relatively high differential radial velocities which likely put them on hyperbolic orbits, suggestive of strong dynamical interactions in the past. In Chapter 5 we present a multi-passband photometric study of the BSS population in NGC 1261. The inner BSS population is found to have two distinct sequences in the color-magnitude diagram, similar to double BSS sequences detected in other GCs. These well defined sequences are presumably linked to single short-lived events such as core collapse, which are expected to boost the formation of BSSs. In agreement with this, we find a BSS sequence in NGC 1261 which can be well reproduced individually by a theoretical model prediction of a 2 Gyr old population of stellar collision products, which are expected to form in the denser inner regions during short-lived core contraction phases. We argue that NGC 1261 can be considered a candidate for the post-core-collapse bounce state seen in dynamical simulations of old GCs.

\n \nWe present $BVR_{\\rm c}I_{\\rm c}$ broad-band flux spectra for the\nhost galaxies of GRB 970508, GRB 980613, GRB 980703, GRB 990123 and\nGRB 991208 obtained with the 6-m telescope of SAO RAS.\nThe comparison of the broad-band flux spectra of these host galaxies with the\ntemplate spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of local starburst galaxies of\ndifferent morphological types shows that the\n$BVR_{\\rm c}I_{\\rm c}$ of the hosts\nare best fitted by the spectral properties of template SEDs of\nstarburst galaxies and that there is a significant internal extinction\nin these host galaxies.\nWe derived the absolute magnitudes\nof the GRB host galaxies making use of SEDs for the starburst galaxies.\nTo create theoretical templates we performed the population synthesis modeling\nof the continuum spectral\nenergy distribution of the host galaxies of GRB 970508 and GRB 980703 using\ndifferent extinction laws (Cardelli et al. [CITE] and\nCalzetti et al. [CITE]) and\nassuming burst and exponential scenarios of star formation.\nThe comparison of $BVR_{\\rm c}I_{\\rm c}$ broad-band flux spectra\nwith the\nlocal starburst galaxies templates and theoretical templates as well as direct\nestimates (using Balmer emission lines) of the internal extinction\nshows that it is likely to be of great importance\nto take into account effects of the internal extinction in the host galaxies.\nFrom the energy distribution in the spectrum of the host galaxy of\nGRB 991208 and from the intensity of their spectral lines\n(with allowance for the effects of internal extinction) it\nfollows that this is a GRB galaxy with the highest\nmassive star-formation rate of all known GRB\ngalaxies -up to hundreds of solar masses per year.\nThe reduced luminosity of these dusty galaxies (e.g. for the host of GRB 970508\n$A_{V}\\sim 2$ mag, for the host of GRB 980703 $A_{V}\\sim\n0.6$ mag\nand for the host of GRB 991208 $A_{V}\\sim 2$ mag)\ncould explain the observational fact (it results independently from our\n$BVR_{\\rm c}I_{\\rm c}$\nphotometry and from calculated spectral distribution for the subset of galaxies\nhaving been observed with the 6-m telescope):\nnone of the observed GRB host galaxies with known distances is\nbrighter than the local galaxies with the luminosity $L_{*}$\n(where $L_{*}$ is the "knee" of the local luminosity function).\n\n\n

The high cosmological precision offered by the next generation of galaxy surveys hinges on improved corrections for Galactic dust extinction. We explore the possibility of estimating both the dust extinction and large-scale structure from a single photometric galaxy survey, making use of the predictable manner in which Milky Way dust affects the measured brightness and colors of galaxies in a given sky location in several redshift bins. To test our method, we use a synthetic catalog from a cosmological simulation designed to model the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. At high Galactic latitude (∣b∣ ≳ 20°) and a resolution of 1° ( 7 ′ ), we predict the uncertainty in the measurement of dust extinction, E(B − V), to be 0.005 mag (0.015 mag). This is similar to the uncertainty of existing dust maps, illustrating the feasibility of our method. Simultaneous estimation of large-scale structure is predicted to recover the galaxy overdensity δ with a precision of ∼0.01 (∼0.05) at 1° ( 7 ′ ) resolution. We also introduce a Bayesian formalism that combines prior information from existing dust maps with the likelihood of Galactic dust extinction determined from the excursion of observed galaxy properties.

The 3D extinction and structure are studied for the Taurus, Orion, Perseus, and California molecular clouds based on the LAMOST spectroscopy. Stellar color excess is calculated with the intrinsic color index derived from the atmospheric parameters in the LAMOST DR8 catalog and the observed color index in the Gaia EDR3 and the 2MASS PSC. In combination with the distance from the Gaia EDR3 parallax, the 3D dust extinction maps are retrieved in the color excesses and with an uncertainty of ∼0.03 mag and ∼0.07 mag respectively. The extinction maps successfully separate the clouds that overlap in the sky area and manifest the structure of the individual cloud. Meanwhile, a bow-like structure is found with a distance range from 175 to 250 pc, half of which is a part of the Per-Tau Shell in similar coordinates and distance while the other half is not. Three low-extinction rings are additionally discovered and briefly discussed.

Because of strong and spatially highly variable interstellar extinction and extreme source crowding, the faint (K>15) stellar population in the Milky Way's nuclear cluster is still poorly studied. RR Lyrae stars provide us with a tool to estimate the mass of the oldest, relative dim stellar population. Recently, we analyzed HST/WFC3/IR observations of the central 2.3'x2.3' of the Milky Way and found 21 variable stars with periods between 0.2 and 1d. Here, we present a further comprehensive analysis of these stars. The period-luminosity relationship of RR Lyrae is used to derive their extinctions and distances. Using multiple approaches, we classify our sample as four RRc, four RRab and three candidates, ten binaries. Especially, the four RRabs show sawtooth light curves and fall exactly onto the Oosterhoff I division in the Bailey diagram. Compared to the RRabs reported by Minniti et al, 2016, our new RRabs have higher extinction (A_K>1.8) and should be closer to the Galactic Centre. The extinction and distance of one RRab match those for the nuclear star cluster given in previous works. We perform simulations and find that after correcting for incompleteness, there could be no more than 40 RRabs within the nuclear star cluster and in our field-of-view. Through comparing with the known globular clusters of the Milky Way, we estimate that if there exists an old, metal-poor (-1.5<[Fe/H]<-1) stellar population in the Milky Way nuclear star cluster on a scale of 5x5pc, then it contributes at most 4.7x10^5 solar mass, i.e., ~18% of the stellar mass.

Context. Over its history, the Milky Way has accreted several smaller satellite galaxies. These mergers added stars and gas to the Galaxy and affected the properties of the pre-existing stellar populations. Stellar chemical abundances and ages are needed to establish the chronological order of events that occur before, during, and after such mergers. Aims. We report the precise ages (∼6.5%) and chemical abundances for the TITANS, a sample of old metal-poor dwarfs and subgiants with accurate atmospheric parameters. We also obtain ages with an average precision of 10% for a selected sample of dwarf stars from the GALAH survey. We use these stars, located within ∼1 kiloparsec of the Sun, to analyse the chronology of the chemical evolution of in situ and accreted metal-poor stellar populations. Methods. We determined ages via isochrone fitting. For the TITANS, we determined Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, Ni, Ba, and Eu abundances using spectrum synthesis. The [Mg/Fe] abundances of the GALAH stars were re-scaled to be consistent with the abundances of the TITANS. We separated stellar populations by primarily employing chemical abundances and orbits. Results. We find that star formation in the so-called Gaia-Enceladus or Gaia-Sausage galaxy, the last major system to merge with the Milky Way, lasted at least 3 billion years and got truncated 9.6 ± 0.2 billion years ago. This marks with a very high level of precision the last stage of its merging process. We also identified stars of a heated metal-poor in-situ population with virtually null net rotation, probably disturbed by several of the early Milky Way mergers. We show that this population is more metal-rich than Gaia-Enceladus at any moment in time. Conclusions. The sequence of events uncovered in our analysis supports the hypothesis that Gaia-Enceladus truncated the formation of the high-α disc and caused the gas infall that forms the low-α disc.

Thin and thick discs are prominent components in the Milky Way and other spiral galaxies, but their formation histories are not yet understood, which is particularly true for thick discs. This is partially due to the fact that we lack sufficient understanding of thin and thick discs in other galaxies to determine how common features of the Milky Way’s discs are. Here, we conduct an integral field spectroscopy study of the thin and thick discs in the edge-on Milky Way analogue IC 2531, using observational data from the WiFeS IFU spectrograph on the ANU 2.3m telescope. We provide spectral analysis of IC 2531’s kinematics and stellar populations in the thin and thick disc regions by conducting ppxf fitting with Vazdekis models. We found that IC 2531’s disc above the dust plane generally has chemical properties between the Milky Way’s chemical thin and thick disc. IC 2531’s thick disc is somewhat similar to the Milky Way’s in terms of stellar populations: on average, it is older, more metal-poor than its corresponding thin disc, but similarly alpha-enhanced in general. But we do find a clearly alpha-rich thick disc bin though one of our ‘thick disc’ bins may be dominated by a warped thin disc. These results may help to constrain formation theories of thick discs.

Within the central 10 pc of our Galaxy lies a dense cluster of stars, the nuclear star cluster. This cluster forms a distinct component of our Galaxy. Nuclear star clusters are common objects and are detected in ~ 75% of nearby galaxies. It is, however, not fully understood how nuclear star clusters form. The Milky Way nuclear star cluster is the closest of its kind. At a distance of only 8 kpc we can spatially resolve its stellar populations and kinematics much better than in external galaxies. This makes the Milky Way nuclear star cluster the perfect local reference object for understanding the structure and assembly history of nuclear star clusters in general. There are of the order of 107 stars within the central 10 pc of the Galactic center. Most of these stars are several Gyr old late-type stars. However, there are also more than 100 hot early-type stars in the central parsec of the Milky Way, with ages of only a few Myr. Beyond a projected distance of 0.5 pc of the Galactic center, the density of young stars was largely unknown, since only very few spectroscopic observations existed so far. We covered the central &gt;4 pc2 (0.75 sq.arcmin) of the Galactic center using the integral-field spectrograph KMOS (VLT). We extracted more than 1,000 spectra from individual stars and identified &gt;20 new early-type stars based on their spectra. We studied the spatial distribution of the different populations and their kinematics to put constraints on the assembly history of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster.

The primary objective of this work is to create an all sky extinction map of the Milky Way galaxy. We have cross-matched the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS data release 8) photometric observations with that of Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX data release 6). This provides a wide range of wavelength coverage from Far Ultra-Violet through the optical spectrum and gives one unique SDSS source for every GALEX source. We discuss a sample of ∼32000 objects in the north galactic pole (≥75° latitude) from this combined database. The Castelli and Kurucz Atlas was fit to the photometric observations of each star, best fit being determined using a chi-square test. Best fit parameters provide the spectral type and extinction towards each of the objects. The shift in magnitude obtained during the best-fit can be used to determine the distance to each of the stars. With this data, a comprehensive extinction map can be made for the high-latitude objects and later extended to all-sky.

Using a Bayesian technology we derived distances and extinctions for over 100,000 red giant stars observed by the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey by taking into account spectroscopic constraints from the APOGEE stellar parameters and photometric constraints from 2MASS, as well as a prior knowledge on the Milky Way. Derived distances are compared with those from four other independent methods, the Hipparcos parallaxes, star clusters, APOGEE red clump stars, and asteroseismic distances from APOKASC (Rodrigues et al. 2014) and SAGA Catalogues (Casagrande et al. 2014). These comparisons covers four orders of magnitude in the distance scale from 0.02 kpc to 20 kpc. The results show that our distances agree very well with those from other methods: the mean relative difference between our Bayesian distances and those derived from other methods ranges from -4.2% to +3.6%, and the dispersion ranges from 15% to 25%. The extinctions toward all stars are also derived and compared with those from several other independent methods: the Rayleigh-Jeans Color Excess (RJCE) method, Gonzalez's two-dimensional extinction map, as well as three-dimensional extinction maps and models. The comparisons reveal that, overall, estimated extinctions agree very well, but RJCE tends to overestimate extinctions for cool stars and objects with low logg.

We present Optically Adaptive System for Imaging Spectroscopy (OASIS) observations obtained at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope for the SB(rs)c galaxy NGC 4900. About 800 spectra in the wavelength range 4700-5500 and 6270-7000 A have been collected with a spatial resolution of ∼50 pc. This galaxy is part of a sample to study the stellar populations and their history in the central region of galaxies. In this paper, we present our iterative technique developed to describe consistently the different stellar components seen through emission and absorption lines. In NGC 4900, we find many young bursts of star formation distributed along the galaxy large-scale bar on each side of the nucleus. They represent nearly 40 per cent of the actual stellar mass in the field of view. The age for these bursts ranges from 5.5 to 8 Myr with a metallicity near and above 2Z ⊙ . The extinction map gives E(B - V) values from 0.19 ± 0.01 near the youngest bursts to 0.62 ± 0.06 in a dusty internal bar perpendicular to the large-scale bar. The Mg 2 and Fe I absorption lines indicate the superposition of a background stellar population with an age between 100 Myr and 3 Gyr, and a subsolar metallicity on average. We propose that all these episodes of star formation are the consequence of a secular evolution. In this scenario, the galactic large-scale bar plays an important role with respect to the recent bursts and the dusty nuclear bar observed. The iterative technique allows us to improve the determination of the stellar population parameters, mainly an older age is obtained for the old component and more reliable stellar population masses are found. A composite/transition type activity in the galaxy nucleus is also revealed with this technique.

The Milky Way’s nuclear stellar disk (NSD) and nuclear star cluster (NSC) are the main features of the Galactic center. Nevertheless, their observation is hampered by the extreme source crowding and high extinction. Hence, their relation and formation scenario are not fully clear yet. We aim to detect the stellar populations from the NSC and the NSD along the line of sight toward the NSC and assess whether they have different stellar populations and star formation histories. We analyzed the color–magnitude diagram, K s versus H−K s , of a region of 8.′2 × 2.′8 centered on the NSC, and detected two different stellar groups with different extinctions. We studied their red clumps to find the features associated with each of the stellar populations. We obtained that the two groups of stars correspond to the NSD and the NSC and found that they have significantly different stellar populations and star formation histories. We detected a double red clump for the NSD population, in agreement with previous work, whereas the NSC presents a more complex structure well fitted by three Gaussian features. We created extinction maps to analyze the extinction variation between the detected stellar groups. We found that the high-extinction layer varies on smaller scales (arcseconds) and that there is a difference of A K s ∼ 0.6 mag between both extinction layers. Finally, we obtained that the distance toward each of the stellar populations is compatible with the Galactic center distance and found some evidence of a slightly closer distance for the NSD stars (∼360 ± 200 pc).