We present the serendipitous discovery of a low optical-luminosity nova occurring in a D-type symbiotic binary star system in the Milky Way. We lay out the extensive archival data alongside new follow-up observations related to the stellar object CN Cha in the constellation of Chamaeleon. The object had long period (250 days), high amplitude (3 mag) optical variability in its recent past, preceding an increase in optical brightness by 8 magnitudes and a persistence at this brightness for about 3 yr, followed by a period of 1.4 mag yr(-1)dimming. The object's current optical luminosity seems to be dominated by H alpha emission, which also exhibits blueshifted absorption (a P-Cygni-like profile). After consideration of a number of theories to explain these myriad observations, we determine that CN Cha is most likely a symbiotic (an evolved-star-white-dwarf binary) system that has undergone a long-duration, low optical brightness, nova, placing it squarely in the class of so-called "slow novae," of which there are only a few known examples. The duration of the optical plateau in CN Cha would make it the shortest timescale plateau of any known slow symbiotic novae.

Though smooth, extended spheroidal stellar outskirts have long been observed around nearby dwarf galaxies, it is unclear whether dwarfs generically host an extended stellar halo. We use imaging from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) to measure the shapes of dwarf galaxies out to four effective radii for a sample of 6758 dwarfs at 0.005 < z > and 10(7.0) < M-star/M-circle dot < 10(9.6). We find that dwarfs are slightly triaxial, with < B/A > greater than or similar to 0.75 (where the ellipsoid is characterized by three principal semiaxes constrained by C <= B <= A). At M-star > 10(8.5) M-circle dot, the galaxies grow from thick disk-like at one effective radius toward the spheroidal extreme at four effective radii. We also see that although blue dwarfs are, on average, characterized by thinner disks than red dwarfs, both blue and red dwarfs grow more spheroidal as a function of radius. This relation also holds true for a comparison between field and satellite dwarfs. This uniform trend toward relatively spheroidal shapes as a function of radius is consistent with an in situ formation mechanism for stellar outskirts around low-mass galaxies, in agreement with proposed models where star formation feedback produces round stellar outskirts around dwarfs.

Low-mass satellites around Milky Way (MW)-like galaxies are important probes of small-scale structure and galaxy formation. However, confirmation of satellite candidates with distance measurements remains a key barrier to fast progress in the Local Volume (LV). We measure the surface brightness fluctuation distances to recently cataloged candidate dwarf satellites around 10 massive hosts within D < 12 Mpc to confirm association. The satellite systems of these hosts are complete and mostly cleaned of contaminants down to M-g similar to -9 to -10, within the area of the search footprints. Joining this sample with hosts surveyed to comparable or better completeness in the literature, we explore how well cosmological simulations combined with common stellar to halo mass relations (SHMR) match observed satellite luminosity functions in the classical satellite luminosity regime. Adopting an SHMR that matches hydrodynamic simulations, we find that the predicted overall satellite abundance agrees well with the observations. The MW is remarkably typical in its luminosity function among LV hosts. We find that the host-to-host scatter predicted by the model is in close agreement with the scatter between the observed systems, once the different masses of the observed systems are taken into account. However, we find significant evidence that the observed systems have more bright and fewer faint satellites than the SHMR model predicts, possibly necessitating a higher normalization of the SHMR around halo masses of 10(11) M or significantly greater scatter than present in common SHMRs. These results demonstrate the utility of nearby satellite systems in inferring the galaxy-subhalo connection in the low-mass regime.

Many approaches to galaxy dynamics assume that the gravitational potential is simple and the distribution function is time invariant. Under these assumptions there are traditional tools for inferring potential parameters given observations of stellar kinematics (e.g., Jeans models). However, spectroscopic surveys measure many stellar properties beyond kinematics. Here we present a new approach for dynamical inference, Orbital Torus Imaging, which makes use of kinematic measurements and element abundances (or other invariant labels). We exploit the fact that, in steady state, stellar labels vary systematically with orbit characteristics (actions), yet must be invariant with respect to orbital phases (conjugate angles). The orbital foliation of phase space must therefore coincide with surfaces along which all moments of all stellar label distributions are constant. Both classical-statistics and Bayesian methods can be built on this; these methods will be more robust and require fewer assumptions than traditional tools because they require no knowledge of the (spatial) survey selection function and do not involve second moments of velocity distributions. We perform a classical-statistics demonstration with red giant branch stars from the APOGEE surveys: we model the vertical orbit structure in the Milky Way disk to constrain the local disk mass, scale height, and the disk-halo mass ratio (at fixed local circular velocity). We find that the disk mass can be constrained (naively) at the few-percent level with Orbital Torus Imaging using only eight element-abundance ratios, demonstrating the promise of combining stellar labels with dynamical invariants.

We present the kinematic and chemical profiles of red giant stars observed by the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE)-2 survey in the direction of the Jhelum stellar stream, a Milky Way substructure located in the inner halo of the Milky Way at a distance from the Sun of approximate to 13 kpc. From the six APOGEE-2 Jhelum pointings, we isolate stars with log(g) < 3.5, leaving a sample of 289 red giant stars. From this sample of APOGEE-2 giants, we identified seven stars that are consistent with the astrometric signal from Gaia DR2 for this stream. Of these seven, one falls onto the red giant branch (RGB) along the same sequence as the Jhelum stars presented by Ji et al. This new Jhelum member has [Fe/H] = -2.2 and is at the tip of the RGB. By selecting high orbital eccentricity, metal-rich stars, we identify red giants in our APOGEE2 sample that are likely associated with the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage (GES) merger. We compare the abundance profiles of the Jhelum stars and GES stars and find similar trends in alpha-elements, as expected for low-metallicity populations. However, we find that the orbits for GES and Jhelum stars are not generally consistent with a shared origin. The chemical abundances for the APOGEE-2 Jhelum star and other confirmed members of the stream are similar to stars in known stellar streams and thus are consistent with an accreted dwarf galaxy origin for the progenitor of the stream, although we cannot rule out a globular cluster origin.

The structure of a dwarf galaxy is an important probe of the effects of stellar feedback and environment. Using an unprecedented sample of 223 low-mass satellites from the ongoing Exploration of Local Volume Satellites survey, we explore the structures of dwarf satellites in the mass range 10(5.5) < M-star < 10(8.5) M-circle dot. We survey satellites around 80% of the massive, M-K < - 22.4 mag, hosts in the Local Volume (LV). Our sample of dwarf satellites is complete to luminosities of M-V < -9 mag and surface brightness mu(0,V) < 26.5 mag arcsec(-2) within at least similar to 200 projected kpc of the hosts. For this sample, we find a median satellite luminosity of M-V = -12.4 mag, median size of r(e) = 560 pc, median ellipticity of epsilon = 0.30, and median Sersic index of n = 0.72. We separate the satellites into late- and early-type (29.6% and 70.4%, respectively). The mass-size relations are very similar between them within similar to 5%, which indicates that the quenching and transformation of a late-type dwarf into an early-type one involves only very mild size evolution. Considering the distribution of apparent ellipticities, we infer the intrinsic shapes of the early- and late-type samples. Combining with literature samples, we find that both types of dwarfs are described roughly as oblate spheroids that get more spherical at fainter luminosities, but early-types are always rounder at fixed luminosity. Finally, we compare the LV satellites with dwarf samples from the cores of the Virgo and Fornax clusters. We find that the cluster satellites show similar scaling relations to the LV early-type dwarfs but are roughly 10% larger at fixed mass, which we interpret as being due to tidal heating in the cluster environments. The dwarf structure results presented here are a useful reference for simulations of dwarf galaxy formation and the transformation of dwarf irregulars into spheroidals.

APOGEE spectra offer less than or similar to 1 km s(-1) precision in the measurement of stellar radial velocities. This holds even when multiple stars are captured in the same spectrum, as happens most commonly with double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2s), although random line-of-sight alignments of unrelated stars can also occur. We develop a code that autonomously identifies SB2s and higher order multiples in the APOGEE spectra, resulting in 7273 candidate SB2s, 813 SB3s, and 19 SB4s. We estimate the mass ratios of binaries, and for a subset of these systems with a sufficient number of measurements we perform a complete orbital fit, confirming that most systems with periods of <10 days have circularized. Overall, we find an SB2 fraction (F (SB2)) similar to 3% among main-sequence dwarfs, and that there is not a significant trend in F (SB2) with temperature of a star. We are also able to recover a higher F (SB2) in sources with lower metallicity, however there are some observational biases. We also examine light curves from TESS to determine which of these spectroscopic binaries are also eclipsing. Such systems, particularly those that are also pre- and post-main sequence, are good candidates for a follow-up analysis to determine their masses and temperatures.

We present a novel technique to study Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) by constraining surviving companions of historical extragalactic SN by combining archival photographic plates and Hubble Space 'Telescope (HST) imaging. We demonstrate this technique for Supernova 1972E, the nearest known SN Ia in 125 yr. Some models of SNe Ia describe a white dwarf with a non-degenerate companion that donates enough mass to trigger thermonuclear detonation. Hydrodynamic simulations and stellar evolution models show that these donor stars will survive the explosion, and show increased luminosity for at least a 1000 yr. Thus, late-time observations of the exact location of a supernova can constrain the presence of a surviving donor star and progenitor models. We find the explosion site of SN 1972E by analysing 17 digitized photographic plates taken with the European Southern Observatory 1-m Schmidt and 1 plate taken with the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory 1.5-m telescope. Using the Gaia eDR3 catalogue to determine Supernova 1972E's location yields: alpha = 13(h)39(m)52(s).708 +/- 0(s).004 and delta = -31 degrees 40'9 '' .00 +/- 0 '' .04 (ICRS). In 2005, HST/ACS imaged the host galaxy of SN 1972E with the F435W, F555W, and F814 W filters covering the explosion site. The nearest detected source is offset by 3.0 times our positional precision, and is inconsistent with the colours expected of a surviving donor star. Thus, the limiting magnitude of the HST observation (F555W > 28 mag) rules out all lie star companion models and the most luminous main-sequence companion model currently in the literature. The remaining main-sequence companion models could be tested with a 10 orbit HST exposure in the F606W filter.

We determine three independent Population II distance moduli to the Fornax dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy, using wide-field, ground-based VI imaging acquired with the Magellan-Baade telescope at Las Campanas Observatory. After subtracting foreground stars using Gaia EDR3 proper motions, we measure an I-band tip of the red giant branch(TRGB) magnitude of I-0(TRGB) = 16.753 +/- 0.03(stat) +/- 0.037(sys) mag, with a calibration based in the LMC TRGB giving a distance modulus of mu(TRGB)(0) = 20.80 +/- 0.037(stat) +/- 0.057(sys) mag. We determine an RR Lyrae (RRL) distance from template mean magnitudes, with periods adopted from the literature. Adopting a Gaia DR2 calibration of first overtone RRL period-luminosity and period-Wesenheit relations, we find mu(PLZ)(0) = 20.74 +/- 0.01(stat) +/- 0.12(sys) mag and it mu(PWZ)(0) = 20.68 +/- 0.02(stat) +/- 0.07(sys) mag. Finally, we determine a distance from Fornax's horizontal branch (HB) and two galactic globular cluster calibrators, giving mu(HB )(0)= 20.83 +/- 0.03(stat) +/- 0.09(sys) mag. These distances are each derived from homogeneous IMACS photometry, are anchored to independent geometric zero-points, and utilize different classes of stars. We therefore average over independent uncertainties and report the combined distance modulus = 20.770 +/- 0.042(stat) +/- 0.024(sys) mag (corresponding to a distance of 143 +/- 3 kpc).

The spatial distribution of mono-abundance populations (MAPs, selected in [Fe/H] and [Mg/Fe]) reflect the chemical and structural evolution in a galaxy and impose strong constraints on galaxy formation models. In this paper, we use APOGEE data to derive the intrinsic density distribution of MAPs in the Milky Way, after carefully considering the survey selection function. We find that a single exponential profile is not a sufficient description of the Milky Way's disc. Both the individual MAPs and the integrated disc exhibit a broken radial density distribution; densities are relatively constant with radius in the inner Galaxy and rapidly decrease beyond the break radius. We fit the intrinsic density distribution as a function of radius and vertical height with a 2D density model that considers both a broken radial profile and radial variation of scale height (i.e. flaring). There is a large variety of structural parameters between different MAPs, indicative of strong structure evolution of the Milky Way. One surprising result is that high-alpha MAPs show the strongest flaring. The young, solar-abundance MAPs present the shortest scale height and least flaring, suggesting recent and ongoing star formation confined to the disc plane. Finally we derive the intrinsic density distribution and corresponding structural parameters of the chemically defined thin and thick discs. The chemical thick and thin discs have local surface mass densities of 5.62 +/- 0.08 and 15.69 +/- 0.32 M(circle dot)pc(-2), respectively, suggesting a massive thick disc with a local surface mass density ratio between thick to thin disc of 36 per cent.