Abstract

Invited Talk - Plenary

Friday, 17 September 2021, 12:15

Galactic Archaeology with the oldest stars in the Milky Way

Anke Arentsen
Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg

The most metal-poor stars we still find in the Milky Way today were born in pristine environments in the early Universe - these stars are expected to be extremely old. They can teach us about the First Stars and about the early formation and evolution of our Galaxy. In this talk, I will present the contributions of my doctoral thesis to the field of Galactic Archaeology, using the oldest stars in the Milky Way. I studied the binary properties of some of the most metal-poor stars known, which have important implications for their origins. I also started the new photometric and spectroscopic Pristine Inner Galaxy Survey (PIGS), searching for metal-poor stars in the challenging bulge region of the Milky Way. This has resulted in the largest spectroscopic sample of very metal-poor stars in the inner Galaxy to date, which I used to study the chemical and dynamical properties of the ancient inner Milky Way. I will summarise my main results, and discuss some exciting future prospects.