Browsing by Author "Gilmore, Gerard"

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    KINEMATICS AND CHEMISTRY OF RECENTLY DISCOVERED RETICULUM 2 AND HOROLOGIUM 1 DWARF GALAXIES
    (2015) Koposov, Sergey E.; Casey, Andrew R.; Belokurov, Vasily; Lewis, James R.; Gilmore, Gerard; Worley, Clare; Hourihane, Anna; Randich, S.; Bensby, T.; Bragaglia, A.; Bergemann, M.; Carraro, G.; Costado, M. T.; Flaccomio, E.; Francois, P.; Heiter, U.; Hill, V.; Jofre, P.; Lando, C.; Lanzafame, A. C.; de Laverny, P.; Monaco, L.; Morbidelli, L.; Sbordone, L.; Mikolaitis, S.; Ryde, N.
    We report on VLT/GIRAFFE spectra of stars in two recently discovered ultra-faint satellites, Reticulum 2 and Horologium 1, obtained as part of the Gaia-ESO Survey. We identify 18 members in Reticulum 2 and five in Horologium 1. We find Reticulum 2 to have a velocity dispersion of 3.22(-0.49)(+1.64) km s(-1) , implying a mass-to-light ratio (M/L) of similar to 500. The mean metallicity of Reticulum 2 is [Fe/H] = -2.46, with an intrinsic dispersion of similar to 0.3 dex and alpha-enhancement of similar to 0.4 dex. We conclude that Reticulum 2 is a dwarf galaxy. We also report on the serendipitous discovery of four stars in a previously unknown stellar substructure near Reticulum 2 with [Fe/H] similar to -2 and V-hel similar to 220 km s(-1), far from the systemic velocity of Reticulum 2. For Horologium 1 we infer a velocity dispersion of sigma (V) = 4.9(-0.9)(+2.8) km s(-1) and a M/L ratio of similar to 600, leading us to conclude that Horologium 1 is also a dwarf galaxy. Horologium 1 is slightly more metal-poor than Reticulum 2 ([Fe/H] = -2.76) and is similarly alpha-enhanced: [alpha/Fe] similar to 0.3 dex with a significant spread of metallicities of 0.17 dex. The line-of-sight velocity of Reticulum 2 is offset by 100 km s(-1) from the prediction of the orbital velocity of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), thus making its association with the Cloud uncertain. However, at the location of Horologium 1, both the backward-integrated orbit of the LMC and its halo are predicted to have radial velocities similar to that of the dwarf. Therefore, it is possible that Horologium 1 is or once was a member of the Magellanic family.
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    On the Evolutionary History of a Simulated Disk Galaxy as Seen by Phylogenetic Trees
    (2024) Silva, Danielle de Brito; Jofre, Paula; Tissera, Patricia B.; Yaxley, Keaghan J.; Jara, Jenny Gonzalez; Eldridge, Camilla J. L.; Sillero, Emanuel; Yates, Robert M.; Hua, Xia; Das, Payel; Aguilera-Gomez, Claudia; Johnston, Evelyn J.; Rojas-Arriagada, Alvaro; Foley, Robert; Gilmore, Gerard
    Phylogenetic methods have long been used in biology and more recently have been extended to other fields-for example, linguistics and technology-to study evolutionary histories. Galaxies also have an evolutionary history and fall within this broad phylogenetic framework. Under the hypothesis that chemical abundances can be used as a proxy for the interstellar medium's DNA, phylogenetic methods allow us to reconstruct hierarchical similarities and differences among stars-essentially, a tree of evolutionary relationships and thus history. In this work, we apply phylogenetic methods to a simulated disk galaxy obtained with a chemodynamical code to test the approach. We found that at least 100 stellar particles are required to reliably portray the evolutionary history of a selected stellar population in this simulation, and that the overall evolutionary history is reliably preserved when the typical uncertainties in the chemical abundances are smaller than 0.08 dex. The results show that the shapes of the trees are strongly affected by the age-metallicity relation, as well as the star formation history of the galaxy. We found that regions with low star formation rates produce shorter trees than regions with high star formation rates. Our analysis demonstrates that phylogenetic methods can shed light on the process of galaxy evolution.
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    SN 2009ip at late times - an interacting transient at+2 years
    (2015) Fraser, Morgan; Kotak, Rubina; Pastorello, Andrea; Jerkstrand, Anders; Smartt, Stephen J.; Chen, Ting-Wan; Childress, Michael; Gilmore, Gerard; Inserra, Cosimo; Bauer, Franz Erik