Aarhus Universitets segl

How precise do properties of stars have to be when doing galactic chronology?

The Independent Research Fund Denmark grants Victor Silva Aguirre Dkk 604 800 for further studies into the problem

In the astronomical community it has always been accepted to be true that determining accurate ages of stars will allow us to discriminate between various formation scenarios of the Milky Way. This has never been tested, though. So a very important and urgen question is how precisely do we need to determine the properties of stars in order to use them as fossils that can reveal the chronology of our Galaxy? In order to look into this problem, the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond) has granted Dkk 604 800 to Victor Silva Aguirre of SAC for the proposal "Accurate properties of stars to unveil the history of our Galaxy"

The activities will be focused on quantifying the differences between several realisations of cosmological simulations (e.g., in the predicted ages of the resulting stars, their chemical composition, their distribution in the Galaxy, the velocity in which they travel, etc.), and comparing these differences to the precision obtained in these parameters with state-of-the-art techniques to determine them.

This task has not been attempted before due to the lack of people-power with the right set of skills available to carry a computationally heavy task such as the analysis of these sophisticated simulations of our Galaxy. The one year project is aimed at providing a nescessary and sufficient basis for a later ERC-consolidator application.