No Arabic abstract
Previous studies have found that the Galactic rotation velocity-metallicity (V-[Fe/H]) relations for the thin and thick disk populations show negative and positive slopes, respectively. The first Gaia Data Release includes the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) information, which we use to analyze the V-[Fe/H] relation for a strictly selected sample with high enough astrometric accuracy. We aim to arrive at an explanation for the slopes of the V-[Fe/H] relationship. We measure the V-[Fe/H] relation for thin and thick disk stars classified on the basis of their [$alpha$/Fe] and [Fe/H] abundances. We find dV/d[Fe/H]= -18 +/- 2 km/s/dex for stars in the thin disk and dV/d[Fe/H]= +23 +/- 10 km/s/dex for thick disk stars, so we confirm the different signs for the slopes. The negative value of dV/d[Fe/H] for thick disk stars is consistent with previous studies, but the combination of TGAS and APOGEE data provide higher precision, even though systematic errors could exceed +/-5 km/s/dex . Our average measurement of dV/d[Fe/H] for local thick disk stars shows a somewhat flatter slope than the previous studies, but we confirm a significant spread and a dependence of the slope on the [alpha/Fe] ratio of the stars. Using a simple N-body model, we demonstrate that the observed trend for the thick and thin disk can be explained by the observed radial metallicity gradients and the correlation between orbital eccentricity and metallicity in the thick disk.
The spatial variations of the velocity field of local stars provide direct evidence of Galactic differential rotation. The local divergence, shear, and vorticity of the velocity field---the traditional Oort constants---can be measured based purely on astrometric measurements and in particular depend linearly on proper motion and parallax. I use data for 304,267 main-sequence stars from the Gaia DR1 Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution to perform a local, precise measurement of the Oort constants at a typical heliocentric distance of 230 pc. The pattern of proper motions for these stars clearly displays the expected effects from differential rotation. I measure the Oort constants to be: A = 15.3+/-0.4 km/s/kpc, B = -11.9+/-0.4 km/s/kpc, C = -3.2+/-0.4 km/s/kpc and K = -3.3+/-0.6 km/s/kpc, with no color trend over a wide range of stellar populations. These first confident measurements of C and K clearly demonstrate the importance of non-axisymmetry for the velocity field of local stars and they provide strong constraints on non-axisymmetric models of the Milky Way.
The paucity of hypervelocity stars (HVSs) known to date has severely hampered their potential to investigate the stellar population of the Galactic Centre and the Galactic Potential. The first Gaia data release gives an opportunity to increase the current sample. The challenge is the disparity between the expected number of hypervelocity stars and that of bound background stars. We have applied a novel data mining algorithm based on machine learning techniques, an artificial neural network, to the Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS) catalogue. With no pre-selection of data, we could exclude immediately $sim 99 %$ of the stars in the catalogue and find 80 candidates with more than $90%$ predicted probability to be HVSs, based only on their position, proper motions, and parallax. We have cross-checked our findings with other spectroscopic surveys, determining radial velocities for 30 and spectroscopic distances for 5 candidates. In addition, follow-up observations have been carried out at the Isaac Newton Telescope for 22 stars, for which we obtained radial velocities and distance estimates. We discover 14 stars with a total velocity in the Galactic rest frame > 400 km/s, and 5 of these have a probability $>50%$ of being unbound from the Milky Way. Tracing back their orbits in different Galactic potential models we find one possible unbound HVS with velocity $sim$ 520 km/s, 5 bound HVSs, and, notably, 5 runaway stars with median velocity between 400 and 780 km/s. At the moment, uncertainties in the distance estimates and ages are too large to confirm the nature of our candidates by narrowing down their ejection location, and we wait for future Gaia releases to validate the quality of our sample. This test successfully demonstrates the feasibility of our new data mining routine.
We report on the detection of a small overdensity of stars in velocity space with systematically higher Galactocentric rotation velocity than the Sun by about 20 km s$^{-1}$ in the $Gaia$ Data Release 1 Tycho-Gaia astrometric solution (TGAS) data. We find these fast Galactic rotators more clearly outside of the Solar radius, compared to inside of the Solar radius. In addition, the velocity of the fast Galactic rotators is independent of the Galactocentric distance up to $R-R_{odot}sim0.6$ kpc. Comparing with numerical models, we qualitatively discuss that a possible cause of this feature is the co-rotation resonance of the Perseus spiral arm, where the stars in peri-centre phase in the trailing side of the Perseus spiral arm experience an extended period of acceleration owing to the torque from the Perseus arm.
Open clusters have long been used to gain insights into the structure, composition, and evolution of the Galaxy. With the large amount of stellar data available for many clusters in the Gaia era, new techniques must be developed for analyzing open clusters, as visual inspection of cluster color-magnitude diagrams is no longer feasible. An automatic tool will be required to analyze large samples of open clusters. We seek to develop an automatic isochrone-fitting procedure to consistently determine cluster membership and the fundamental cluster parameters. Our cluster characterization pipeline first determined cluster membership with precise astrometry, primarily from TGAS and HSOY. With initial cluster members established, isochrones were fitted, using a chi-squared minimization, to the cluster photometry in order to determine cluster mean distances, ages, and reddening. Cluster membership was also refined based on the stellar photometry. We used multiband photometry, which includes ASCC-2.5 BV, 2MASS JHK_s, Gaia G band. We present parameter estimates for all 24 clusters closer than 333 pc as determined by the Catalogue of Open Cluster Data and the Milky Way Star Clusters catalog. We find that our parameters are consistent to those in the Milky Way Star Clusters catalog. We demonstrate that it is feasible to develop an automated pipeline that determines cluster parameters and membership reliably. After additional modifications, our pipeline will be able to use Gaia DR2 as input, leading to better cluster memberships and more accurate cluster parameters for a much larger number of clusters.
We study the relationship between age, metallicity, and alpha-enhancement of FGK stars in the Galactic disk. The results are based upon the analysis of high-resolution UVES spectra from the Gaia-ESO large stellar survey. We explore the limitations of the observed dataset, i.e. the accuracy of stellar parameters and the selection effects that are caused by the photometric target preselection. We find that the colour and magnitude cuts in the survey suppress old metal-rich stars and young metal-poor stars. This suppression may be as high as 97% in some regions of the age-metallicity relationship. The dataset consists of 144 stars with a wide range of ages from 0.5 Gyr to 13.5 Gyr, Galactocentric distances from 6 kpc to 9.5 kpc, and vertical distances from the plane 0 < |Z| < 1.5 kpc. On this basis, we find that i) the observed age-metallicity relation is nearly flat in the range of ages between 0 Gyr and 8 Gyr; ii) at ages older than 9 Gyr, we see a decrease in [Fe/H] and a clear absence of metal-rich stars; this cannot be explained by the survey selection functions; iii) there is a significant scatter of [Fe/H] at any age; and iv) [Mg/Fe] increases with age, but the dispersion of [Mg/Fe] at ages > 9 Gyr is not as small as advocated by some other studies. In agreement with earlier work, we find that radial abundance gradients change as a function of vertical distance from the plane. The [Mg/Fe] gradient steepens and becomes negative. In addition, we show that the inner disk is not only more alpha-rich compared to the outer disk, but also older, as traced independently by the ages and Mg abundances of stars.