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M dwarfs in the Galactic halo

  • Chapter
New Light on Dark Stars

Part of the book series: Astronomy and Planetary Sciences ((ASTRONOMY))

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Abstract

Approximately 99.7% of the stars in the immediate vicinity of the Sun are members of the Galactic disk. The remaining stars belong to the Galactic halo — the fossil remnants of the first extensive burst of star formation in the history of the Galaxy (see Chapter 6). A clear distinction should be drawn between the stellar halo population — made of baryonic material and having a total mass of only ~109 M ⊙ — and the dark-matter halo, which is believed to be the dominant contributor to the Galactic potential. The dark-matter halo is held responsible for the relatively flat Galactic rotation curve, but its constituents have not yet been identified; those are the targets of gravitational lensing surveys. The present chapter concentrates on the stellar halo, and illustrates how observations of the lower-mass halo subdwarfs provide insight into the structure of the oldest stellar population so far identified in the Galaxy. The nature of the dark-matter halo is a subject in itself, and recent investigations are summarised elsewhere [T1].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Formerly of Edinburgh University, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, Scotland

    Dr I. Neill Reid

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Dr Suzanne L. Hawley (Associate Professor)

Authors
  1. Dr I. Neill Reid
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  2. Dr Suzanne L. Hawley
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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Reid, I.N., Hawley, S.L. (2000). M dwarfs in the Galactic halo. In: New Light on Dark Stars. Astronomy and Planetary Sciences. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3663-7_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-3663-7_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4471-3665-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4471-3663-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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