CAREER: The origin of the metal-poor halo of the Milky Way

PI将通过研究其组成成分的化学成分来重建银河系恒星晕的起源：晕本身极度缺乏金属的恒星和绕银河系运行的最不明亮的矮星系中缺乏金属的恒星。她将利用她对澳大利亚天空地图望远镜的访问来识别银河系晕中的大量恒星，并将这些数据与麦哲伦望远镜的高光谱分辨率观测结果结合起来。因此，她将收集银河系中最缺乏金属的恒星的遗留数据集，这将大大提高我们对早期宇宙和银河系旧恒星光环形成的理解。与此同时，PI将产生相应的理论框架，允许对恒星丰度测量进行宇宙学上的解释。该计划有三个具体目标：(1)进行恒星考古，为我们提供推动早期恒星形成的主要物理过程的新约束；(2)进行矮星系考古，让我们更好地了解星系的形成；(3)确定贫金属恒星作为银河系晕吸积历史示踪剂的作用。PI将通过公开发布她对恒星化学丰度的新测量结果，向广泛的受众传播她的研究。她还将与麻省理工学院在线科学、技术和工程社区（MOSTEC）密切合作，这是一个免费的在线教育和丰富计划，面向来自服务不足和代表性不足社区的高中毕业生。最后，PI还将制作一系列短视频，旨在向学生展示如何使用麦哲伦望远镜进行观测，从而鼓励他们成为如何收集天文数据的知情参与者。

The PI will reconstruct the origin of the Milky Way's stellar halo by studying the chemical compositions of its constituents: extremely metal-poor stars in the halo itself and metal-poor stars in the least luminous dwarf galaxies orbiting about the Galaxy. She will leverage her access to the Australian SkyMapper Telescope to identify large numbers of stars in the Galactic halo, and combine these data with high spectral resolution observations using the Magellan telescope. She will therefore assemble a legacy data set of the most metal-poor stars in the galaxy, which will substantially advance our understanding of the early universe and the build-up of the old stellar halo of the Milky Way. In concert, the PI will produce accompanying theoretical frameworks that allow for a cosmologically informed interpretation of stellar abundance measurements. The program has three specific goals: (1) to perform stellar archaeology, giving us new constraints on the major physical processes that drove early star formation; (2) to perform dwarf-galaxy archaeology, allowing us to better understand galaxy formation; and (3) to determine the role of metal-poor stars as tracers of the accretion history of the Milky Way halo.The PI will disseminate her research to a broad audience by publicly releasing her new measurements on the chemical abundances of stars. She will also collaborate closely with the MIT Online Science, Technology, and Engineering Community (MOSTEC), which is a free online education and enrichment program for high school seniors from underserved and underrepresented communities. Finally, the PI will also create a series of short videos designed to show students how to observe with the Magellan telescopes, thereby encouraging them to be informed participants in how astronomical data are gathered.