Unveiling the Assembly History of Galaxies by Dissecting their Structure, Chemical Evolution, and Stellar Populations

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Understanding how galaxies -- the luminous building blocks of the Universe -- evolve is one of the fundamental goals of astronomy and a critical step toward understanding our origins. This project will explore the different physical processes through which galaxies grow by dissecting the distribution, velocities, chemical content, and excitation conditions of their constituent stars and gas. It will analyze both imaging data and exquisite, cutting-edge, spectroscopic data from a survey conducted at the McDonald Observatory, a research unit of the University of Texas at Austin. The analyses in this project will lay the groundwork for future explorations planned by next-generation astronomical facilities with heavy US investments. As part of this program, the team will also provide science-ready data products from the survey and educational materials to the community at large. This program will include nationally-recognized professional development workshops for several dozen secondary school teachers and impact over 15,000 secondary students. Nearly 50% of these students are expected to be Hispanic, a demographic group strongly underrepresented in science fields. Curriculum content and workshop practices will align with the National Science Education Standards, the new Next Generation Science Standards, and Texas science standards. Understanding the assembly history of galaxies as a function of epoch is one of the fundamental goals of astronomy. This project will explore the relative importance of different assembly modes by combining structural archaeology, chemical evolution, and the star formation history of galaxies. Combining photometric surveys with the spatially-resolved integral field spectroscopic data from a survey conducted at McDonald observatory, the team will be able to dissect spiral galaxies into dynamically different regions, such as the bulge, bar, spiral arms, and outer disk, as well as regions of different excitations. The project will examine the distributions of stellar and gas properties and determine how the abundance gradient varies across galaxies with different Hubble types and establish whether different gas-phase metallicity indicators show the same gradient and patterns within a galaxy. As part of this program, the team will also provide science-ready data products from the survey and educational materials to the community at large. The broader impact of this program incorporates Teacher Professional Development Workshops. The program is designed to insure maximum direct transfer of information gained by the teachers to their students in the classroom. The teachers involved in the program typically teach classes with a 51% Hispanic demographic, so the potential impact of the program on underrepresented minority students is substantial.