Jovan

We present evidence for a spatially-dependent systematic error in the first data release of ${\it Gaia}$ parallaxes based on comparisons to asteroseismic parallaxes in the ${\it Kepler}$ field, and present a parametrized model of the angular dependence of these systematics. We report an error of $0.059^{+0.004}_{-0.004}$mas on scales of 0.3deg, which decreases for larger scales to become $0.011^{+0.006}_{-0.004}$mas at 8deg. This is consistent with the $\sim2\%$ zeropoint offset for the whole sample discussed by Huber et al., and is compatible with the effect predicted by the ${\it Gaia}$ team. Our results are robust to dust prescriptions and choices in temperature scales used to calculate asteroseismic parallaxes. We also do not find evidence for significant differences in the signal when using red clump versus red giant stars. Our approach allows us to quantify and map the correlations in an astrophysically interesting field, resulting in a parametrized model of the spatial systematics that can be used to construct a covariance matrix for any work that relies upon TGAS parallaxes.

Detailed chemical abundances are presented for seven M31 outer halo globular clusters (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 paper 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), alpha-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 globular clusters (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 globular clusters, 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.

Some formation scenarios that have been put forward to explain multiple populations within Globular Clusters (GCs) require that the young massive cluster have large reservoirs of cold gas within them, which is necessary to form future generations of stars. In this paper we use deep observations taken with Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) to assess the amount of molecular gas within 3 young (50-200 Myr) massive (~10^6 Msun) clusters in the Antennae galaxies. No significant CO(3--2) emission was found associated with any of the three clusters. We place upper limits for the molecular gas within these clusters of ~1x10^5 Msun (or <9 % of the current stellar mass). We briefly review different scenarios that propose multiple episodes of star formation and discuss some of their assumptions and implications. Our results are in tension with the predictions of GC formation scenarios that expect large reservoirs of cool gas within young massive clusters at these ages.

MilkyWay@home is a volunteer computing project that allows people from every country in the world to volunteer their otherwise idle processors to Milky Way research. Currently, more than 25,000 people (150,000 since November 9, 2007) contribute about half a PetaFLOPS of computing power to our project. We currently run two types of applications: one application fits the spatial density profile of tidal streams using statistical photometric parallax, and the other application finds the N-body simulation parameters that produce tidal streams that best match the measured density profile of known tidal streams. The stream fitting application is well developed and is producing published results. The Sagittarius dwarf leading tidal tail has been fit, and the algorithm is currently running on the trailing tidal tail and bifurcated pieces. We will soon have a self-consistent model for the density of the smooth component of the stellar halo and the largest tidal streams. The $N$-body application has been implemented for fitting dwarf galaxy progenitor properties only, and is in the testing stages. We use an Earth-Mover Distance method to measure goodness-of-fit for density of stars along the tidal stream. We will add additional spatial dimensions as well as kinematic measures in a piecemeal fashion, with the eventual goal of fitting the orbit and parameters of the Milky Way potential (and thus the density distribution of dark matter) using multiple tidal streams.

We present robust constraints from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) on the shape and distribution of the dark matter halo within the Milky Way (MW). Using the number density distribution and kinematics of SDSS halo stars, we probe the dark matter distribution to heliocentric distances exceeding 10 kpc and galactocentric distances exceeding 20 kpc. Our analysis utilizes Jeans equations to generate two-dimensional acceleration maps throughout the volume; this approach is thoroughly tested on a cosmologically derived N-body+SPH simulation of a MW-like galaxy. We show that the known accelerations (gradients of the gravitational potential) can be successfully recovered in such a realistic system. Leveraging the baryonic gravitational potential derived by Bovy & Rix (2013), we show that the gravitational potential implied by the SDSS observations cannot be explained, assuming Newtonian gravity, by visible matter alone: the gravitational force experienced by stars at galactocentric distances of 20 kpc is as much as three times stronger than what can be attributed to purely visible matter. We also show that the SDSS data provide a strong constraint on the shape of the dark matter halo potential. Within galactocentric distances of 20 kpc, the dark matter halo potential is well described as an oblate halo with axis ratio qDM=0.7+/-0.1; this corresponds to an axis ratio qDM=0.4+/-0.1 for the dark matter density distribution. Because of our precise two-dimensional measurements of the acceleration of the halo stars, we can reject several MOND models as an explanation of the observed behavior.

We report the discovery of two dwarf galaxies, Pisces A and B, from a blind 21 cm HI search. These were the only two galaxies found via optical imaging and spectroscopy of 22 HI clouds identified in the GALFA-HI survey as dwarf galaxy candidates. They have properties consistent with being in the Local Volume ($<10$ Mpc), and one has resolved stellar populations such that it may be on the outer edge of the Local Group ($\sim 1 \, {\rm Mpc}$ from M31). While the distance uncertainty makes interpretation ambiguous, these may be among the faintest starforming galaxies known. Additionally, rough estimates comparing these galaxies to $\Lambda$CDM dark matter simulations suggest consistency in number density, implying that dark matter halos likely to host these galaxies are primarily HI-rich. The galaxies may thus be indicative of a large population of dwarfs at the limit of detectability that are comparable to the faint satellites of the Local Group. Because they are outside the influence of a large dark matter halo to alter their evolution, these galaxies can provide critical anchors to dwarf galaxy formation models.

This paper presents a brief, semi-technical comparison of the essential features of the frequentist and Bayesian approaches to statistical inference, with several illustrative examples implemented in Python. The differences between frequentism and Bayesianism fundamentally stem from differing definitions of probability, a philosophical divide which leads to distinct approaches to the solution of statistical problems as well as contrasting ways of asking and answering questions about unknown parameters. After an example-driven discussion of these differences, we briefly compare several leading Python statistical packages which implement frequentist inference using classical methods and Bayesian inference using Markov Chain Monte Carlo.

In the Galactic halo, metal-bearing Galactic halo material mixes into high velocity clouds (HVCs) as they hydrodynamically interact. This interaction begins long before the clouds completely dissipate and long before they slow to the velocity of the Galactic material. In order to make quantitative estimates of the mixing efficiency and resulting metal enrichment of HVCs, we made detailed 2 and 3 dimensional simulations of cloud-ISM interactions. Our simulations track the hydrodynamics and time dependent ionization levels. They assume that the cloud originally has a warm temperature and extremely low metallicity while the surrounding medium has a high temperature, low density, and substantial metallicity, but our simulations can be generalized to other choices of initial metallicities. In our simulations, mixing between cloud and halo gas noticeably raises the metallicity of the high velocity material. We present plots of the mixing efficiency and metal enrichment as a function of time.

The thin, extended planes of satellite galaxies detected around both the Milky Way and Andromeda are not a natural prediction of the LCDM paradigm. Galaxies in these distinct planes may have formed and evolved in a different way (e.g., tidally) to their off-plane neighbours. If this were the case, one would expect the on- and off-plane dwarf galaxies in Andromeda to have experienced different evolutionary histories, which should be reflected by the chemistries, dynamics, and star formation histories of the two populations. In this work, we present new, robust kinematic observations for 2 on-plane M31 dSphs (And XVI and XVII) and compile and compare all available observational metrics for the on- and off-plane dwarfs to search for a signal that would corroborate such a hypothesis. We find that, barring their spatial alignment, the on- and off-plane Andromeda dwarf galaxies are indistinguishable from one another, arguing against vastly different formative and evolutionary histories for these two populations.

Using 3.6$\mu$m images of 97 early-type galaxies, we develop and verify methodology to measure globular cluster populations from the S$^4$G survey images. We find that 1) the ratio, T$_{\rm N}$, of the number of clusters, N$_{\rm CL}$, to parent galaxy stellar mass, M$_*$, rises weakly with M$_*$ for early-type galaxies with M$_* > 10^{10}$ M$_\odot$ when we calculate galaxy masses using a universal stellar initial mass function (IMF), but that the dependence of T$_{\rm N}$ on M$_*$ is removed entirely once we correct for the recently uncovered systematic variation of IMF with M$_*$, and 2) for M$_* < 10^{10}$ M$_\odot$ there is no trend between N$_{\rm CL}$ and M$_*$, the scatter in T$_{\rm N}$ is significantly larger (approaching 2 orders of magnitude), and there is evidence to support a previous, independent suggestion of two families of galaxies. The behavior of N$_{\rm CL}$ in the lower mass systems is more difficult to measure because these systems are inherently cluster poor, but our results may add to previous evidence that large variations in cluster formation and destruction efficiencies are to be found among low mass galaxies. The average fraction of stellar mass in clusters is $\sim$ 0.0014 for M$_* > 10^{10}$ M$_\odot$ and can be as large as $\sim 0.02$ for less massive galaxies. These are the first results from the S$^4$G sample of galaxies, and will be enhanced by the sample of early-type galaxies now being added to S$^4$G and complemented by the study of later type galaxies within S$^4$G.

We present spectroscopy of the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A (Cas A) observed at infrared wavelengths from 10 - 40 micron with the Spitzer Space Telescope and at millimeter wavelengths in 12CO and 13CO J = 2 - 1 (230 and 220 GHz) with the Heinrich Hertz Submillimeter Telescope. The IR spectra demonstrate high-velocity features toward a molecular cloud coincident with a region of bright radio continuum emission along the northern shock front of Cas A. The millimeter observations indicate that CO emission is broadened by a factor of two in some clouds toward Cas A, particularly to the south and west. We believe that these features trace interactions between the Cas A shock front and nearby molecular clouds. In addition, some of the molecular clouds that exhibit broadening in CO lie 1 - 2' away from the furthest extent of the supernova remnant shock front. We propose that this material may be accelerated by ejecta with velocity significantly larger than the observed free-expansion velocity of the Cas A shock front. These observations may trace cloud interactions with fast-moving outflows such as the bipolar outflow along the southwest to northeast axis of the Cas A supernova remnant, as well as fast-moving knots seen emerging in other directions.

We have recently shown (Ibata et al. 2014) that pairs of satellite galaxies located diametrically opposite each other around their host possess predominantly anti-correlated velocities. This is consistent with a scenario in which $\sim 50$% of satellite galaxies belong to kinematically-coherent rotating planar structures, similar to those detected around the giant galaxies of the Local Group. Here we extend this analysis, examining the incidence of satellites of giant galaxies drawn from an SDSS photometric redshift catalog. We find that there is a $\sim 17$% overabundance ($> 3 \sigma$ significance) of candidate satellites at positions diametrically opposite a spectroscopically confirmed satellite. We show that cosmological simulations do not possess this property when the contamination is included, and that there are in fact, after subtracting contamination, 2 to 3 times more satellites diametrically opposed to a spectroscopically confirmed satellite than at $90\deg$ from it. We also examine the correlation between the satellite pair positions and the orientation of the host galaxy major axis. We find that those satellite pairs with anti-correlated velocities have a strong preference ($\sim 3:1$) to align with the major axis of the host whereas those with correlated velocities display the opposite behavior. This correlation of the satellite alignments appears to be stronger than the well-documented preference of satellites to be located close to the major axis of their host. We finally show that repeating a similar analysis to Ibata et al. (2014) with same-side satellites is generally hard to interpret, but is not inconsistent with our previous results when strong quality-cuts are applied on the sample. All these unexpected correlations strongly suggest that a substantial fraction of satellite galaxies are causally-linked in their formation and evolution.

This paper presents CCD multicolor photometry for 304 old star clusters in the nearby spiral galaxy M31. Of which photometry of 55 star clusters is first obtained. The observations were carried out as a part of the Beijing--Arizona--Taiwan--Connecticut (BATC) Multicolor Sky Survey from 1995 February to 2008 March, using 15 intermediate-band filters covering 3000--10000 \AA. Detailed comparisons show that our photometry is in agreement with previous measurements. Based on the ages and metallicities from Caldwell et al. and the photometric measurements here, we estimated the clusters' masses by comparing their multicolor photometry with stellar population synthesis models. The results show that the sample clusters have masses between $\sim 3\times10^4 M_\odot$ and $\sim 10^7 M_\odot$ with the peak of $\sim 4\times10^5 M_\odot$. The masses here are in good agreement with those in previous studies. Combined with the masses of young star clusters of M31 from Wang et al., we find that the peak of mass of old clusters is ten times that of young clusters.

While wide-field surveys of M31 have revealed much substructure at large radii, understanding the nature and origin of this material is not straightforward from morphology alone. Using deep HST/ACS data, we have derived further constraints in the form of quantitative star formation histories (SFHs) for 14 inner halo fields which sample diverse substructures. In agreement with our previous analysis of colour-magnitude diagram morphologies, we find the resultant behaviours can be broadly separated into two categories. The SFHs of 'disc-like' fields indicate that most of their mass has formed since z~1, with one quarter of the mass formed in the last 5 Gyr. We find 'stream-like' fields to be on average 1.5 Gyr older, with <10 percent of their stellar mass formed within the last 5 Gyr. These fields are also characterised by an age--metallicity relation showing rapid chemical enrichment to solar metallicity by z=1, suggestive of an early-type progenitor. We confirm a significant burst of star formation 2 Gyr ago, discovered in our previous work, in all the fields studied here. The presence of these young stars in our most remote fields suggests that they have not formed in situ but have been kicked-out from through disc heating in the recent past.

We used VIMOS on VLT to perform $V$ and $I$ band imaging of the outermost halo of NGC 5128 / Centaurus A ($(m-M)_0=27.91\pm0.08$), 65 kpc from the galaxy's center and along the major axis. The stellar population has been resolved to $I_0 \approx 27$ with a $50\%$ completeness limit of $I_0 = 24.7$, well below the tip of the red-giant branch (TRGB), which is seen at $I_0 \approx 23.9$. The surface density of NGC 5128 halo stars in our fields was sufficiently low that dim, unresolved background galaxies were a major contaminant in the source counts. We isolated a clean sample of red-giant-branch (RGB) stars extending to $\approx 0.8$ mag below the TRGB through conservative magnitude and color cuts, to remove the (predominantly blue) unresolved background galaxies. We derived stellar metallicities from colors of the stars via isochrones and measured the density falloff of the halo as a function of metallicity by combining our observations with HST imaging taken of NGC 5128 halo fields closer to the galaxy center. We found both metal-rich and metal-poor stellar populations and found that the falloff of the two follows the same de Vaucouleurs' law profiles from $\approx 8$ kpc out to $\approx$ 70 kpc. The metallicity distribution function (MDF) and the density falloff agree with the results of two recent studies of similar outermost halo fields in NGC 5128. We found no evidence of a "transition" in the radial profile of the halo, in which the metal-rich halo density would drop rapidly, leaving the underlying metal-poor halo to dominate by default out to greater radial extent, as has been seen in the outer halo of two other large galaxies. If NGC 5128 has such a transition, it must lie at larger galactocentric distances.

There is considerable interest in hydrodynamic instabilities in dead zones of protoplanetary disks as a mechanism for driving angular momentum transport and as a source of particle-trapping vortices to mix chondrules and incubate planetesimal formation. We present simulations with a pseudo-spectral anelastic code and with the compressible code Athena, showing that stably stratified flows in a shearing, rotating box are violently unstable and produce space-filling, sustained turbulence dominated by large vortices with Rossby numbers of order 0.2-0.3. This Zombie Vortex Instability (ZVI) is observed in both codes and is triggered by Kolmogorov turbulence with Mach numbers less than 0.01. It is a common view that if a given constant density flow is stable, then stable vertical stratification should make the flow even more stable. Yet, we show that sufficient vertical stratification can be unstable to ZVI. ZVI is robust and requires no special tuning of boundary conditions, or initial radial entropy or vortensity gradients (though we have studied ZVI only in the limit of infinite cooling time). The resolution of this paradox is that stable stratification allows for a new avenue to instability: baroclinic critical layers. ZVI has not been seen in previous studies of flows in rotating, shearing boxes because those calculations frequently lacked vertical density stratification and/or sufficient numerical resolution. Although we do not expect appreciable angular momentum transport from ZVI in the small domains in this study, we hypothesize that ZVI in larger domains with compressible equations may lead to angular transport via spiral density waves.

We present a study of the kinematics of the remote globular cluster NGC5694 based on GIRAFFE@VLT medium resolution spectra. A sample of 165 individual stars selected to lie on the Red Giant Branch in the cluster Color Magnitude Diagram was considered. Using radial velocity and metallicity from Calcium triplet, we were able to select 83 bona-fide cluster members. The addition of six previously known members leads to a total sample of 89 cluster giants with typical uncertainties <1.0 km/s in their radial velocity estimates. The sample covers a wide range of projected distances from the cluster center, from ~0.2 arcmin to 6.5 arcmin = 23 half-light radii (r_h). We find only very weak rotation, as typical of metal-poor globular clusters. The velocity dispersion gently declines from a central value of sigma=6.1 km/s to sigma = 2.5 km/s at ~2 arcmin = 7.1= r_h, then it remainins flat out to the next (and last) measured point of the dispersion profile, at ~4 arcmin = 14.0 r_h, at odds with the predictions of isotropic King models. We show that both isotropic single-mass non-collisional models and multi-mass anisotropic models can reproduce the observed surface brightness and velocity dispersion profiles.

We investigate the angular and kinematic distributions of satellite galaxies around a large sample of bright isolated primaries in the spectroscopic and photometric catalogues of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We detect significant anisotropy in the spatial distribution of satellites. To test whether this anisotropy could be related to the rotating disks of satellites recently found by Ibata et al. in a sample of SDSS galaxies, we repeat and extend their analysis. Ibata et al. found an excess of satellites on opposite sides of their primaries having anticorrelated radial velocities. We find that this excess is sensitive to small changes in the sample selection criteria which can greatly reduce its significance. In addition, we find no evidence for correspondingly correlated velocities for satellites observed on the same side of their primaries, which would be expected for rotating disks of satellites. We conclude that the detection of coherent rotation in the satellite population in current observational samples is not robust. We compare our data to the $\Lambda$CDM Millennium simulations populated with galaxies according to the semi-analytic model of Guo et al. We find excellent agreement with the spatial distribution of satellites in the SDSS data and the lack of a strong signal from coherent rotation.

We present a sample of dwarf galaxies that suffer ongoing disruption by the tidal force of nearby massive galaxies. Analysing structural and stellar population properties using the archival imaging and spectroscopic data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we find that they are likely a `smoking gun' example of the formation of early-type dwarf galaxies (dEs) in the galaxy group environment through the tidal stirring. Inner cores of these galaxies are fairly intact and the observed light profiles are well fitted with the Sersic functions, while the tidally stretched stellar halos are prominent in the outer parts. They are all located within the 50 kpc sky-projected distance from the center of host galaxies and no dwarf galaxies have relative line-of-sight velocity larger than 205 km/s to their hosts. We derive the Composite Stellar Population (CSP) properties these galaxies by fitting the SDSS optical spectra to a multiple-burst composite stellar population model. We find that these galaxies accumulate a significant fraction of stellar mass within the last 1 Gyr, while they contain a majority stellar population of intermediate age of 2 to 4 Gyr. With these evidences, we argue that tidal stirring, particularly through the galaxy-galaxy interaction, might have an important role in the formation and evolution of dEs in the group environment, where the influence of other gas stripping mechanism might be limited.

Cultural heritage relating to the sky in the form of sundials, old observatories and the like, are commonly found in many cities in the Old World, but rarely in the New. This paper examines astronomical heritage embodied in the Barolo Palace in Buenos Aires. While references to Dante Alighieri and his poetry are scattered in streets, buildings and monuments around the Western world, in the city of Buenos Aires, the only street carrying Dante's name is less than three blocks long and, appropriately, is a continuation of Virgilio street. A couple of Italian immigrants -a wealthy businessman, Luis Barolo, and an imaginative architect, Mario Palanti- foresaw this situation nearly a century ago, and did not save any efforts or money with the aim of getting Dante and his cosmology an appropriate monumental recognition, in reinforced concrete. The Barolo Palace is a unique combination of both astronomy and the worldview displayed in the Divine Comedy, Dante's poetic masterpiece. It is known that the Palace's design was inspired by the great poet, but the details are not recorded; this paper relies on Dante's text to consider whether it may add to our understanding of the building. Although the links of the Palace's main architectural structure with the three realms of the Comedy have been studied in the past, its unique astronomical flavor has not been sufficiently emphasized. The word of God, as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church in Sacred Scripture, Aristotle's physics and Ptolemy's astronomy, all beautifully converge in Dante's verses, and the Barolo Palace reflects this.

We apply two new state-of-the-art methods that model the distribution of observed tracers in projected phase space to lift the mass / velocity anisotropy (VA) degeneracy and deduce constraints on the mass profiles of galaxies, as well as their VA. We first show how a distribution function based method applied to the satellite kinematics of otherwise isolated SDSS galaxies shows convincing observational evidence of age matching: red galaxies have more concentrated dark matter (DM) halos than blue galaxies of the same stellar or halo mass. Then, applying the MAMPOSSt technique to M87 (traced by its red and blue globular clusters) we find that very cuspy DM is favored, unless we release priors on DM concentration or stellar mass (leading to unconstrained slope). For the Fornax dwarf spheroidal (traced by its metal-rich and metal-poor stars), the inner DM slope is unconstrained, with weak evidence for a core if the stellar mass is fixed. This highlights how priors are crucial for DM modeling. Finally, we find that blue GCs around M87 and metal-rich stars in Fornax have tangential outer VA.

We aim at reproducing the chemical evolution of the bulge of M31 by means of a detailed chemical evolution model, including radial gas flows coming from the disk. We study the impact of the initial mass function, the star formation rate and the time scale for bulge formation on the metallicity distribution function of stars. We compute several models of chemical evolution using the metallicity distribution of dwarf stars as an observational constraint for the bulge of M31. Then, by means of the model which best reproduces the metallicity distribution function, we predict the [X/Fe] vs. [Fe/H] relations for several chemical elements (O, Mg, Si, Ca, C, N). Our best model for the bulge of M31 is obtained by means of a robust statistical method and assumes a Salpeter initial mass function, a Schmidt-Kennicutt law for star formation with an exponent k=1.5, an efficiency of star formation of $\sim 15\pm 0.27\, Gyr^{-1}$, and an infall timescale of $\sim 0.10\pm 0.03$Gyr. Our results suggest that the bulge of M31 formed very quickly by means of an intense star formation rate and an initial mass function flatter than in the solar vicinity but similar to that inferred for the Milky Way bulge. The [$\alpha$/Fe] ratios in the stars of the bulge of M31 should be high for most of the [Fe/H] range, as is observed in the Milky Way bulge. These predictions await future data to be proven.

We present the first results from our HST Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG) survey of seven central supergiant cluster galaxies and their globular cluster (GC) systems. We measure a total of 48000 GCs in all seven galaxies, representing the largest single GC database. We find that a log-normal shape accurately matches the observed luminosity function (LF) of the GCs down to the GCLF turnover point, which is near our photometric limit. In addition, the LF has a virtually identical shape in all seven galaxies. Our data underscore the similarity in the formation mechanism of massive star clusters in diverse galactic environments. At the highest luminosities (log L > 10^7 L_Sun) we find small numbers of "superluminous" objects in five of the galaxies; their luminosity and color ranges are at least partly consistent with those of UCDs (Ultra-Compact Dwarfs). Lastly, we find preliminary evidence that in the outer halo (R > 20 kpc), the LF turnover point shows a weak dependence on projected distance, scaling as L_0 ~ R^-0.2, while the LF dispersion remains nearly constant.

We use cosmological N-body simulations from the Aquarius Project to study the tidal effects of a dark matter halo on the shape and orientation of its substructure. Although tides are often assumed to enhance asphericity and to stretch subhaloes tangentially, these effects are short lived: as in earlier work, we find that subhaloes affected by tides become substantially more spherical and show a strong radial alignment toward the centre of the host halo. These results, combined with a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation, may be used to assess the effect of Galactic tides on the observed population of dwarf spheroidal (dSph) satellites of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies. If, as the model suggests, the relatively low dark matter content of luminous dSphs such as Fornax and Leo I is due to tidal stripping, then their gravitational potential must be substantially more spherical than that of more heavily dark matter-dominated systems such as Draco or Carina. The model also predicts a tidally-induced statistical excess of satellites whose major axis aligns with the direction to the central galaxy. We find tantalizing evidence of this in the M31 satellite population, which suggests that tides may have played an important role in its evolution.

Our proximity and external vantage point make M31 an ideal testbed for understanding the structure of spiral galaxies. The Andromeda Optical and Infrared Disk Survey (ANDROIDS) has mapped M31's bulge and disk out to R=40 kpc in $ugriJK_s$ bands with CFHT using a careful sky calibration. We use Bayesian modelling of the optical-infrared spectral energy distribution (SED) to estimate profiles of M31's stellar populations and mass along the major axis. This analysis provides evidence for inside-out disk formation and a declining metallicity gradient. M31's $i$-band mass-to-light ratio ($M/L_i^*$) decreases from 0.5 dex in the bulge to $\sim 0.2$ dex at 40 kpc. The best-constrained stellar population models use the full $ugriJK_s$ SED but are also consistent with optical-only fits. Therefore, while NIR data can be successfully modelled with modern stellar population synthesis, NIR data do not provide additional constraints in this application. Fits to the $gi$-SED alone yield $M/L_i^*$ that are systematically lower than the full SED fit by 0.1 dex. This is still smaller than the 0.3 dex scatter amongst different relations for $M/L_i$ via $g-i$ colour found in the literature. We advocate a stellar mass of $M_*(30\mathrm{kpc})=10.3^{+2.3}_{-1.7}\times 10^{10}\mathrm{M}_\odot$ for the M31 bulge and disk.

In this paper we describe a new UV-initiative HST project (GO-13297) that will complement the existing F606W and F814W database of the ACS Globular Cluster (GC) Treasury by imaging most of its clusters through UV/blue WFC3/UVIS filters F275W, F336W and F438W. This "magic trio" of filters has shown an uncanny ability to disentangle and characterize multiple-population (MP) patterns in GCs in a way that is exquisitely sensitive to C, N, and O abundance variations. Combination of these passbands with those in the optical also gives the best leverage for measuring helium enrichment. The dozen clusters that had previously been observed in these bands exhibit a bewildering variety of MP patterns, and the new survey will map the full variance of the phenomenon. The ubiquity of multiple stellar generations in GCs has made the formation of these cornerstone objects more intriguing than ever; GC formation and the origin of their MPs have now become one and the same problem. In the present paper we will describe the data base and our data reduction strategy, as well as the uses we intend to make of the final photometry, astrometry, and proper motions. We will also present preliminary color-magnitude diagrams from the data so far collected. These diagrams also draw on data from GO-12605 and GO-12311, which served as a pilot project for the present GO-13297.

We describe the construction of a highly reliable sample of approximately 7,000 optically faint periodic variable stars with light curves obtained by the asteroid survey LINEAR across 10,000 sq.deg of northern sky. Majority of these variables have not been cataloged yet. The sample flux limit is several magnitudes fainter than for most other wide-angle surveys; the photometric errors range from ~0.03 mag at $r=15$ to ~0.20 mag at r=18. Light curves include on average 250 data points, collected over about a decade. Using SDSS-based photometric recalibration of the LINEAR data for about 25 million objects, we selected ~200,000 most probable candidate variables and visually confirmed and classified approximately 7,000 periodic variables using phased light curves. The reliability and uniformity of visual classification across eight human classifiers was calibrated and tested using a SDSS Stripe 82 region variable star catalog, and verified using an unsupervised machine learning approach. The resulting sample of periodic LINEAR variables is dominated by 3,900 RR Lyrae stars and 2,700 eclipsing binary stars of all subtypes, and includes small fractions of relatively rare populations such as asymptotic giant branch stars and SX Phoenicis stars. We discuss the distribution of these mostly uncataloged variables in various diagrams constructed with optical-to-infrared SDSS, 2MASS and WISE photometry, and with LINEAR light curve features. An interesting side result is a robust and precise quantitative description of a strong correlation between the light-curve period and color/spectral type for close and contact eclipsing binary stars. These large samples of robustly classified variable stars will enable detailed statistical studies of the Galactic structure and physics of binary and other stars, and we make them publicly available.