2004/11/18 by James E. Taylor, Taylor, James E.
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0411549
4 pages, 4 figures; to appear in the proceedings of "The Three-Dimensional Universe with Gaia", eds. M. Perryman & C. Turon (ESA SP-576); pdf version of the full poster can be found at http://www-astro.physics.ox.ac.uk/~jet/posters/GAIA_print.pdf
arxiv created 2004/11/18 · openalex publication_date 2004/11/18 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
One of the generic predictions of modern cosmological models is that large galaxies should have experienced many mergers with smaller galaxies at some point in their past. Debris from such encounters will leave spatially distinct substructure in the stellar haloes of nearby galaxies, detectable for a few orbital periods after the final merger. In the case of the Milky Way, kinematic data from surveys such as RAVE and satellite missions such as GAIA will allow us to probe much more of the merger history, and to connect the properties of the stellar halo with those of local dwarf galaxies. To estimate what these programmes may discover, we review current observations of minor mergers in nearby galaxies, and compare these with predictions from a semi-analytic model of galaxy formation.