Estimating the Milky Way's Mass via Hierarchical Bayes: A Blind Test on MUGS2 Simulated Galaxies

In a series of three papers, Eadie et al. developed a hierarchical Bayesian method to estimate the Milky Way Galaxy’s mass given a physical model for the potential, a measurement model, and kinematic data of test particles such as globular clusters (GCs) or halo stars in the Galaxy’s halo. The Galaxy’s virial mass was found to have a 95% Bayesian credible region (c.r.) of (0.67, 1.09) × 1012 M ⊙ . In the present study, we test the hierarchical …