An Exploration of the Milky Way: Our Cosmic Home

Our Universe is made up of many billions of galaxies, yet astronomers are still trying to figure out how they form, evolve, and assemble themselves. The question of how and when galaxies - including our own - take shape across cosmic time is among the most fundamental in modern astronomy. But the answer still eludes us. One of the best ways to answer this question is to explore our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which is made up of some 200 billion stars - and is the optimal laboratory for answering the questions of galaxy formation because, to date, it is one of the only systems where we can obtain detailed and precise data on the positions, motions, and chemical compositions of billions of individual stars. Using our own galaxy as a sandbox for exploring galaxy assembly is the essence of galactic archaeology. In this talk, Dr. Keith Hawkins will take us on a journey through our own galaxy and explore how we can use state-of-the-art data from large-scale missions - visualized in the planetarium - to chart the Milky Way's structure and assembly over the last 10 billion years.

Speaker: Dr Keith Hawkins, University of Texas, Austin