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Caltech

Astronomy Colloquium

Wednesday, October 2, 2013
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Cahill, Hameetman Auditorium
From building blocks to large galaxies: towards understanding the formation of the Milky Way
Anna Frebel, MIT,

The early chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the Universe is vital to our understanding of a host of astrophysical phenomena.  Since the oldest, most metal-poor stars are relics from the high-redshift universe, they probe the chemical and dynamical conditions of a time when large galaxies first began to assemble.  Recent works have shown that the ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (with L<10^5Lsun) contain a relatively large fraction of extremely metal-poor stars and are devoid of solar-metallicity stars. This reflects a rather short or truncated star formation history similar to what one would expect to occur in a first/early galaxy. The chemical signatures of these dwarfs furthermore support the concept that small systems analogous to the surviving ultra-faint galaxies were the building blocks of the Milky Way's low-metallicity halo.  This opens a new window for studying galaxy formation with the means of stellar chemical analyses. I will also include some information on our newly discovered [Fe/H]<-7.0 star.

For more information, please contact Althea E. Keith by phone at 626-395-4973 or by email at [email protected].