Tracing the accretion history of the Milky Way with chemical tagging

该项目旨在研究卫星星系的捕获对于像银河系这样的大型星系的成长有多重要。该项目的方法将在其他星系被银河系捕获后很长时间内识别恒星，仅使用化学成分来识别具有河外起源的恒星，而以前的方法只在较小的星系捕获后相对较短的时间内起作用。以这种方式识别的吸积恒星将更完整地描述银河系如何随着时间的推移而成长，它们在银河系中的性质和轨道将阐明它们被捕获的星系的特征。

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.