CCA Colloquium: Keith Hawkins

CCA Colloquium: Keith Hawkins

Title: Galactic Archaeology Across the Milky Way

Abstract: What are the processes that govern the formation evolution and assembly of galaxies, like the Milky Way, across cosmic time? This question is among the most fundamental in modern astronomy yet the answer still eludes us to this day. Our Galaxy, our home, The Milky Way,  is an optimal laboratory for answering the questions of galaxy formation and assembly because it is one of the only systems to date where we can obtain detailed and precise data on the positions motions and chemical composition for billions of individual stars. In this talk, I will focus on the research I do in Galactic Archaeology, which aims to use the chemical and dynamical information In a vast number of stars in the Galaxy to understand its formation, assembly, and evolution. Specifically, I will focus on the current projects I carried out as an IDEA Fellow around topics in of chemical tagging and the azimuthal variations in metallically distributions of the Galactic disk.