Although the stellar halo accounts for just ∼1% of the total stellar mass of the Milky Way, the kinematics of halo stars can tell us a lot about the origins and evolution of our Galaxy. It has been shown that the high transverse velocity stars in Gaia DR2 reveal a double sequence in the Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram, indicating a duality in the local halo within 1 kpc. We fit these stars by updating the popular Besançon/Galaxia model, incorporating the latest observational results for the stellar halo. We are able to obtain a good match to the Gaia data and provide new constraints on the properties of the disc and halo. In particular, we show that the thick disc contribution to this high velocity tail is small, but not negligible, and likely has an influence on the red sequence of the HR diagram.

Stellar metallicity gradients set important constraints on the formation and evolution history of the Milky Way. We present radial and vertical metallicity gradients of the Galactic disc for mono-age stellar populations from the LAMOST Galactic Surveys, and discuss their constraints on the disc assemblage history.

Using data from the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) and the Tycho- Gaia astrometric solution catalogue (TGAS), we study the vertical velocity (Vz) patterns in the Milky Way disc. We search in particular for variation in velocity with distance above and below the disc midplane. In contrast to previous suggestions of a breathing mode seen in RAVE data, our results support a combination of bending and breathing modes, likely generated by a combination of external or internal and external mechanisms.

We present a comparison of previous simulations of the interaction of the Galactic disc with the Milky Way (MW) satellites using superbox-10 with new simulations performed with gadget-2 and ChaNGa. The robust performance of gadget-2 motivates us to employ more recent versions of gadget to identify the satellite debris in the MW halo, disc and bulge.

Surveys of pulsating stars in the inner Galaxy have been very limited, but recent large-scale surveys are rapidly bringing us new samples of various kinds of variable stars and new insights into stellar populations therein. Because of the severe interstellar extinction along the Galactic disc, the stellar populations in the inner Galaxy are more easily observed in the infrared, but even in the infrared the interstellar extinction may cause a serious problem in revealing their accurate characteristics. Here we review recent discoveries of Cepheids and Miras, two kinds of luminous pulsating stars with period–luminosity relation, in the inner Galaxy.

The best way to trace back the history of star formation and mass assembly of the Milky Way disc is by combining chemical compositions, ages and phase-space information for a large number of disc stars. With the advent of large surveys of the stellar populations of the Galaxy, such data have become available and can be used to pose constraints on sophisticated models of galaxy formation. We use SDSS-III/APOGEE data to derive the first detailed 3D map of stellar density in the Galactic disc as a function of age, [Fe/H] and [α/Fe]. We discuss the implications of our results for the formation and evolution of the disc, presenting new constraints on the disc structural parameters, stellar radial migration and disc flaring. We also discuss how our results constrain the inside out formation of the disc, and determine the surface-mass density contributions at the solar radius for mono-age, mono-[Fe/H] populations.

Asteroseismology allows us to determine stellar parameters (distances, masses and ages) independently from Gaia astrometry, and it provides us with a new and complementary tool for studying stellar populations in the Galaxy. The prospects and synergies that asteroseismic and astrometric space-borne missions reserve to the field of Galactic archaeology are marvellous, and results have already started to emerge. For example, the study of metallicity gradients as function of age will provide powerful constraints to understand the evolution of the Milky Way disc at high-redshift.

Asteroseismology has the capability of precisely determining stellar properties that would otherwise be inaccessible, such as radii, masses, and thus ages of field stars. When coupling this information with classical determinations of stellar parameters, such as metallicities, effective temperatures, and angular diameters, powerful new diagnostics for Galactic studies can be obtained. An overview of the ongoing Strömgren survey for Asteroseismology and Galactic Archaeology (SAGA) is presented, along with recent results using asteroseismology to investigate the vertical age structure of the Milky Way disc.

While in external or high-redshift galaxies we can only measure integrated stellar properties at best, the Milky Way offers us the unique opportunity to study its individual baryonic components, including stars. We use oscillations measured in red giant stars by the Kepler satellite to derive stellar ages and explore the vertical age structure across few kpc of the Milky Way disc. We find that old stars dominate at increasing Galactic heights, whereas closer to the plane a rich zoology of ages exists. The age distribution of stars shows a smooth distribution over the last 10 Gyr, which together with a flat age-metallicity relation is consistent with a quiescent evolution for the Milky Way disc since a redshift of about two.

We present results of chemical abundance study of a few representative stellar streams of Galactic thick and thin discs. Arcturus stream, which was proposed to have an extragalactic origin, and a recently detected stream called AF06 were studied. Results show a range of metallicity, age and abundance pattern that are consistent with those of Galactic thick disc component. We found similar results for AF06. The abundance and age results unambiguously rule out the possibility that the member stars are vestiges of open clusters. Abundance results of a sample of stars of Sirius and Hercules streams combined with the kinematics show that both the streams belong to the thin disc component. Also, results rule out these are remnants of open clusters. It is likely these streams formed insitu due to perturbations caused by non-axisymmetric components such as bar or spirals.

We estimated the Galactic model parameters for a set of 36 high-latitude fields included in the currently available Data Release 5 (DR 5) of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), to explore their possible variation with the Galactic longitude. The thick disc scaleheight moves from ∼550 pc at 120 < l < 150° to ∼720 pc at 250 < l < 290°, while the thin disc scaleheight is as large as ∼195 pc in the anticenter direction and ∼15% lower at |l| < 30°. Finally, the axis ratio (c/a) of the halo changes from a mean value of ∼0.55 in the two first quadrants of the Galaxy to ∼0.70 at 190 < l < 300°. For the halo, the reason for the dependence of the model parameters on the Galactic longitude arises from the well known asymmetric structure of this component. However, the variation of the model parameters of the thin and thick discs with Galactic longitude originates from the gravitational effect of the Galactic long bar. Moreover, the excess of stars in quadrant I (quadrant III) over quadrant IV (quadrant II) is in agreement with this scenario.

We apply a new, expanded compilation of extragalactic source Faraday rotation measures (RM) to investigate the broad underlying magnetic structure of the Galactic disk at latitudes ∣b∣ ≲15° over all longitudes l, where our total number of RMs is comparable to those in the combined Canadian Galactic Plane Survey (CGPS) at ∣b∣ < 4° and the Southern Galactic Plane (SGPS) ∣b∣<1.5°. We report newly revealed, remarkably coherent patterns of RM at ∣b∣≲15° from l∼270° to ∼90° and RM(l) features of unprecedented clarity that replicate in l with opposite sign on opposite sides of the Galactic center. They confirm a highly patterned bisymmetric field structure toward the inner disc, an axisymmetic pattern toward the outer disc, and a very close coupling between the CGPS/SGPS RMs at ∣b∣≲3° (‘mid-plane’) and our new RMs up to ∣b∣∼15° (‘near-plane’). Our analysis also shows the vertical height of the coherent component of the disc field above the Galactic disc's mid-plane—to be ∼1.5 kpc out to ∼6 kpc from the Sun. This identifies the approximate height of a transition layer to the halo field structure. We find no RM sign change across the plane within ∣b∣∼15° in any longitude range. The prevailing disc field pattern and its striking degree of large-scale ordering confirm that our side of the Milky Way has a very organized underlying magnetic structure, for which the inward spiral pitch angle is 5.5°±1° at all ∣b∣ up to ∼12° in the inner semicircle of Galactic longitudes. It decreases to ∼0° toward the anticentre.

Based on BATC and SDSS photometric data, we adopt the spectral energy distribution (SED) fitting method to evaluate stellar metallicities in the Galaxy. We find that the mean metallicity shifts from metal-rich to metal-poor with the increase of distance from the Galactic Centre.