We report on the detection at $>$98% confidence of an optical counterpart toAGC 249525, an Ultra-Compact High Velocity Cloud (UCHVC) discovered by theALFALFA blind neutral hydrogen survey. UCHVCs are compact, isolated HI cloudswith properties consistent with their being nearby low-mass galaxies, butwithout identified counterparts in extant optical surveys. Analysis of theresolved stellar sources in deep $g$- and $i$-band imaging from the WIYN pODIcamera reveals a clustering of possible Red Giant Branch stars associated withAGC 249525 at a distance of 1.64$\pm$0.45 Mpc. Matching our optical detectionwith the HI synthesis map of AGC 249525 from Adams et al. (2016) shows that thestellar overdensity is exactly coincident with the highest-density HI contourfrom that study. Combining our optical photometry and the HI properties of thisobject yields an absolute magnitude of $-7.1 \leq M_V \leq -4.5$, a stellarmass between $2.2\pm0.6\times10^4 M_{\odot}$ and $3.6\pm1.0\times10^5M_{\odot}$, and an HI to stellar mass ratio between 9 and 144. This object hasstellar properties within the observed range of gas-poor Ultra-Faint Dwarfs inthe Local Group, but is gas-dominated.

Accurate measurement of galaxy structures is a prerequisite for quantitativeinvestigation of galaxy properties or evolution. Yet, the impact of galaxyinclination and dust on commonly used metrics of galaxy structure is poorlyquantified. We use infrared data sets to select inclination-independent samplesof disc and flattened elliptical galaxies. These samples show strong variationin S\'{e}rsic index, concentration, and half-light radii with inclination. Wedevelop novel inclination-independent galaxy structures by collapsing the lightdistribution in the near-infrared on to the major axis, yieldinginclination-independent `linear' measures of size and concentration. With thesenew metrics we select a sample of Milky Way analogue galaxies with similarstellar masses, star formation rates, sizes and concentrations. Opticalluminosities, light distributions, and spectral properties are all found tovary strongly with inclination: When inclining to edge-on, $r$-bandluminosities dim by $>$1 magnitude, sizes decrease by a factor of 2,`dust-corrected' estimates of star formation rate drop threefold, metallicitiesdecrease by 0.1 dex, and edge-on galaxies are half as likely to be classifiedas star forming. These systematic effects should be accounted for in analysesof galaxy properties.

The heavyweight stellar initial mass function (IMF) observed in the cores ofmassive early-type galaxies (ETGs) has been linked to formation of their coresin an initial swiftly-quenched rapid starburst. However, the outskirts of ETGsare thought to be assembled via the slow accumulation of smaller systems inwhich the star formation is less extreme; this suggests the form of the IMFshould exhibit a radial trend in ETGs. Here we report radial stellar populationgradients out to the half-light radii of a sample of eight nearby ETGs.Spatially resolved spectroscopy at 0.8-1.35{\mu}m from the VLT's KMOSinstrument was used to measure radial trends in the strengths of a variety ofIMF-sensitive absorption features (including some which are previouslyunexplored). We find weak or no radial variation in some of these which, givena radial IMF trend, ought to vary measurably, e.g. for the Wing-Ford band wemeasure a gradient of +0.06$\pm$0.04 per decade in radius. Using stellar population models to fit stacked and individual spectra, weinfer that the measured radial changes in absorption feature strengths areprimarily accounted for by abundance gradients which are fairly consistentacross our sample (e.g. we derive an average [Na/H] gradient of-0.53$\pm$0.07). The inferred contribution of dwarf stars to the total lighttypically corresponds to a bottom heavy IMF, but we find no evidence for radialIMF variations in the majority of our sample galaxies.

We present a detailed analysis of the white dwarf luminosity functionsderived from the local 40 pc sample and the deep proper motion catalog of Munnet al (2014, 2017). Many of the previous studies ignored the contribution ofthick disk white dwarfs to the Galactic disk luminosity function, which resultsin an erronous age measurement. We demonstrate that the ratio of thick/thindisk white dwarfs is roughly 20\% in the local sample. Simultaneously fittingfor both disk components, we derive ages of 6.8-7.0 Gyr for the thin disk and8.7 $\pm$ 0.1 Gyr for the thick disk from the local 40 pc sample. Similarly, wederive ages of 7.4-8.2 Gyr for the thin disk and 9.5-9.9 Gyr for the thick diskfrom the deep proper motion catalog, which shows no evidence of a deviationfrom a constant star formation rate in the past 2.5 Gyr. We constrain the timedifference between the onset of star formation in the thin disk and the thickdisk to be $1.6^{+0.3}_{-0.4}$ Gyr. The faint end of the luminosity functionfor the halo white dwarfs is less constrained, resulting in an age estimate of$12.5^{+1.4}_{-3.4}$ Gyr for the Galactic inner halo. This is the first timeages for all three major components of the Galaxy are obtained from a sample offield white dwarfs that is large enough to contain significant numbers of diskand halo objects. The resultant ages agree reasonably well with the ageestimates for the oldest open and globular clusters.