Chemo-dynamics in the Heart of the Galactic Bulge

Zasowski, G.; Ness, M.; García Pérez, A.; Johnson, J.
Bibliographical reference

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #227, id.425.06

Advertised on:
1
2016
Number of authors
4
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
Galactic bulges contain dense, information-rich fossil records of star formation and galaxy assembly, encoded in the chemo-dynamical patterns of the stellar populations. The Milky Way's bulge is the only one in which we can resolve the chemistry and kinematics of individual stars in those populations, but we still do not fully understand the formation and subsequent evolution of the bulge. The SDSS APOGEE survey affords the opportunity to characterize in detail large numbers of stars throughout the Milky Way's entire bulge. We present an analysis of the chemo-dynamical patterns observed in the full set of ~15,000 inner Galaxy stars from APOGEE-1, and compare these patterns to extragalactic bulges and to evolutionary models that include both chemistry and kinematics for the stellar populations. We discuss implications for disentangling contributions from different bulge formation scenarios.