Kohei Hattori’s masterful paper on the reliability of velocity anisotropy measurements in the Milky Way’s stellar halo has just been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The main conclusion is that using line-of-sight velocities to measure the velocity anisotropy profile beyond ~15 kpc from the Galactic center is extremely difficult. It’s a good thing that we will soon have Gaia!

The preprint is available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.06286