Abstract

Invited Talk - Plenary

Thursday, 15 September 2022, 09:30   (Keksdose / virtual plenum)

A GAIA view on the early Milky Way

Else Starkenburg
Kapteyn Institute, University of Groningen

Thanks to the Gaia mission there is a revolution on-going in the study of dynamical complexity of our Galaxy: the Milky Way. To fully understand the Galaxy and its history back to the earliest times, this dynamical information is supplemented with large studies of stellar metallicities and chemical abundance patterns. In particular, the lowest metallicity stars that still exist today represent a window into the early Universe. Studying these stars gives us an avenue to guide our understanding of the early build-up of galaxies like our Milky Way, but also of star formation and supernova feedback in the early Universe, and the epoch of reionization. In this talk I will discuss what we have learned in recent years from the analysis of the most metal-poor stars. Moreover, I will highlight the bright future for this type of study in synergy with the upcoming highly-multiplexed spectroscopic surveys.