Mapping the Milky Way: Data-miners, Modelers, Observers, Unite!

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This work is about models of Milky Way formation and evolution models in two ways. It continues and expands a program to map the Galactic halo structure using photometric data for 4,000 RR Lyrae stars from the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey. This extends the distance limit of current maps and can place better constraints on halo structure. In addition, numerical simulations of galaxy formation are compared to the observational results and to further data sets such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This is a quantitative test whether cosmologically motivated state-of-the-art N-body models reproduce the observed spatial, kinematic, and metallicity distributions of the Milky Way stars. The LINEAR photometric database will be made publicly available and will be a good resource for other researchers in the field. Some part of this project will be done by a doctoral student. A large number of undergraduate students will be involved in follow-up observations of LINEAR-detected RR Lyrae stars and in publication of the results; which gives them hands-on experience doing research.