The mass of the Milky Way out to 100 kpc using halo stars

Understand

We use a distribution function analysis to estimate the mass of the Milky Way out to 100 kpc using a large sample of halo stars.

• These stars are compiled from the literature, and the vast majority (~98%) have 6D phase-space information.
• We pay particular attention to systematic effects, such as the dynamical influence of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and the effect of unrelaxed substructure.
• The LMC biases the (pre-LMC infall) halo mass estimates towards higher values, while realistic stellar halos from cosmological simulations tend to underestimate the true halo mass.