Tracing the accretion history of the Milky Way with chemical tagging

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This project aims to investigate how important the capture of satellite galaxies is for the growth of large galaxies like the Milky Way. This project’s method will identify stars from other galaxies long after they have been captured by the Milky Way, using only chemical compositions to identify stars with extragalactic origins, in contrast to previous methods, which only work for a relatively short time after a smaller galaxy’s capture. The accreted stars identified this way will give a more complete picture of how the Milky Way has grown over time, and their properties and orbits in the Milky Way will illuminate the characteristics of the galaxies from which they were captured.