Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Oct
22
2025
Oct
22
2025
Description
A Puzzle of Elements: Tracing the Milky Way’s Past with Stellar Chemistry
The field of Galactic archaeology exists to answer questions about the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. We can employ the hemodynamics of stars as “puzzle pieces” to assemble our understanding of Milky Way formation. Anomalous systems can help constrain the boundary conditions of the evolution of the Milky Way. One of these such systems is Gaia BH3, a binary system hosting a 33 solar mass black hole and a 0.8 solar mass red giant star. We obtained high-resolution spectroscopy of the red giant star in this system with the Tull Coudé spectrograph on the 2.7m HJST at McDonald to provide the most comprehensive chemical analysis of this star to date. With a good handle on the chemistry of this luminous companion, we attempt to constrain the formation pathway for this system. Beyond the “edge pieces” of Milky Way formation, we can use the bulk characteristics of stars in the Milky Way to understand the overall Galactic evolution of the Milky Way. To probe this, we aim to use stars observed by the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) to construct a relatively unbiased metallicity distribution function (MDF) for the Milky Way halo, alongside corresponding carbon and alpha-element distributions. By applying advanced data-driven and machine-learning techniques, I aim to derive robust chemical distribution functions for this predominantly halo sample. Together, these projects will provide both a global and local perspective on the Milky Way’s chemical enrichment and assembly, and allow us to piece together the puzzle of the Milky Way’s formation.
Other Events in This Series
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Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
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No meeting
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Jan
22
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Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
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No talk scheduled
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Jan
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Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
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12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
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Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
No talk scheduled
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Feb
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Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
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12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
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Feb
19
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Special Seminar: Beyond the Observable - A Machine Learning perspective on modern Cosmology
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12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Speaker(s): Carolina Cuesta - MIT and Harvard University
Feb
26
2025
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
No talk scheduled
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Mar
5
2025
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
No talk scheduled
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Mar
12
2025
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Two talks by Astronomy Department graduate students
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Speaker(s): Erica Sawczynec - The University of Texas at Austin and James Mang - The University of Texas at Austin
Mar
26
2025
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Stars, Planets, and ISM Seminar
Two talks by UT Astronomy graduate students
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm • In Person
Speaker(s): Malia Kao - The University of Texas at Austin and Shelby Courreges - The University of Texas at Austin