Browsing by Author "Johnston, Evelyn"

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    Assembling a high-precision abundance catalogue of solar twins in GALAH for phylogenetic studies
    (2024) Walsen, Kurt; Jofre, Paula; Buder, Sven; Yaxley, Keaghan; Das, Payel; Yates, Robert M.; Hua, Xia; Signor, Theosamuele; Eldridge, Camilla; Rojas-Arriagada, Alvaro; Tissera, Patricia B.; Johnston, Evelyn; Aguilera-Gomez, Claudia; Zoccali, Manuela; Gilmore, Gerry; Foley, Robert
    Stellar chemical abundances have proved themselves a key source of information for understanding the evolution of the Milky Way, and the scale of major stellar surveys such as GALAH have massively increased the amount of chemical data available. However, progress is hampered by the level of precision in chemical abundance data as well as the visualization methods for comparing the multidimensional outputs of chemical evolution models to stellar abundance data. Machine learning methods have greatly improved the former; while the application of tree-building or phylogenetic methods borrowed from biology are beginning to show promise with the latter. Here, we analyse a sample of GALAH solar twins to address these issues. We apply The Cannon algorithm to generate a catalogue of about 40 000 solar twins with 14 high precision abundances which we use to perform a phylogenetic analysis on a selection of stars that have two different ranges of eccentricities. From our analyses, we are able to find a group with mostly stars on circular orbits and some old stars with eccentric orbits whose age-[Y/Mg] relation agrees remarkably well with the chemical clocks published by previous high precision abundance studies. Our results show the power of combining survey data with machine learning and phylogenetics to reconstruct the history of the Milky Way.
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    Formation of S0s in extreme environments I: clues from kinematics and stellar populations
    (2020) Coccato, Lodovico; Jaffe, Yara L.; Cortesi, Arianna; Merrifield, Michael; Johnston, Evelyn; Rodriguez del Pino, Bruno; Haeussler, Boris; Chies-Santos, Ana L.; Mendes de Oliveira, Claudia L.; Sheen, Yun-Kyeong; Menendez-Delmestre, Karin
    Despite numerous efforts, it is still unclear whether lenticular galaxies (S0s) evolve from spirals whose star formation was suppressed, or formed trough mergers or disc instabilities. In this paper we present a pilot study of 21 S0 galaxies in extreme environments (field and cluster), and compare their spatially resolved kinematics and global stellar populations. Our aim is to identify whether there are different mechanisms that form S0s in different environments. Our results show that the kinematics of S0 galaxies in field and cluster are, indeed, different. Lenticulars in the cluster are more rotationally supported, suggesting that they are formed through processes that involve the rapid consumption or removal of gas (e.g. starvation, ram pressure stripping). In contrast, S0s in the field are more pressure supported, suggesting that minor mergers served mostly to shape their kinematic properties. These results are independent of total mass, luminosity, or disc-to-bulge ratio. On the other hand, the mass-weighted age, metallicity, and star formation time-scale of the galaxies correlate more with mass than with environment, in agreement with known relations from previous work, such as the one between mass and metallicity. Overall, our results re-enforce the idea that there are multiple mechanisms that produce S0s, and that both mass and environment play key roles. A larger sample is highly desirable to confirm or refute the results and the interpretation of this pilot study.