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In Pursuit of Galactic Archaeology: Astro2020 Science White Paper
Preprint   Open access

In Pursuit of Galactic Archaeology: Astro2020 Science White Paper

Melissa Ness, Jonathan Bird, Jennifer Johnson, Gail Zasowski, Juna Kollmeier, Hans-Walter Rix, Victor Silva Aguirre, Borja Anguiano, Sarbani Basu, Anthony Brown, …
ArXiv.org
Cornell University
07/11/2019
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1907.05422
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.1907.05422View
Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

The next decade affords tremendous opportunity to achieve the goals of Galactic archaeology. That is, to reconstruct the evolutionary narrative of the Milky Way, based on the empirical data that describes its current morphological, dynamical, temporal and chemical structures. Here, we describe a path to achieving this goal. The critical observational objective is a Galaxy-scale, contiguous, comprehensive mapping of the disk's phase space, tracing where the majority of the stellar mass resides. An ensemble of recent, ongoing, and imminent surveys are working to deliver such a transformative stellar map. Once this empirical description of the dust-obscured disk is assembled, we will no longer be operationally limited by the observational data. The primary and significant challenge within stellar astronomy and Galactic archaeology will then be in fully utilizing these data. We outline the next-decade framework for obtaining and then realizing the potential of the data to chart the Galactic disk via its stars. One way to support the investment in the massive data assemblage will be to establish a Galactic Archaeology Consortium across the ensemble of stellar missions. This would reflect a long-term commitment to build and support a network of personnel in a dedicated effort to aggregate, engineer, and transform stellar measurements into a comprehensive perspective of our Galaxy.
Physics - Astrophysics of Galaxies

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