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The "Galactic halos" group

The formation and evolution of galaxies is a key area of contemporary astrophysics. Current theories and observations suggest that the halo of the Milky Way was built up over a considerably long time scale by the ingestion of disrupted, smaller fragments. But what characterizes those subgalactic objects? How and on what time scales were the components of galactic halos formed and enriched with chemical elements? What is the role of dark matter in their evolution?

The Emmy Noether research group

"Formation histories of galactic halos via chemical abundance analyses of near-by stellar systems"

has received five years funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) to study in detail the formation histories of our Milky Way and its neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy (M31). We will chiefly achieve this by chemical abundance analyses of halo field stars, globular clusters, and dwarf galaxies. Data for these projects will be gathered, amongst others, from the ESO/VLT, Magellan, and Keck facilities.

Please see also this recent press release and this article about our newly funded Emmy Noether group.

News

• Apr 15, 2013: We resume the teaching season for the summer semester 2013.
  Norbert Christlieb and I will offer a course on the "Origin of the elements" (Nucleosynthesis and Galactic chemical evolution) and
  I will provide a few topics for the Seminar "Astronomy and Astrophysics III" (see here for more details). Please contact me if you are interested in further details on the courses.
• Apr 11, 2013: Nikolay's first thesis paper was accepted by A&A, dealing with an indeed "Comprehensive chemical abundance study of the outer halo globular cluster M75"
  Here, Nikolay presents the first element abundance in this cluster to date - congratulations on the acceptance!
• Mar 24, 2013: Finally, our paper on "Neutron capture element deficiency of the Hercules dwarf spheroidal galaxy" was accepted by A&A.
  As the title suggests, this is an amazing finding - read the article here.

Possible Diploma-, Master-, and PhD projects

• Analysis of a super-Lithium rich globular cluster star (MSc/Dipl)
• Kinematics and metallicities of the outer M31 halo (MSc/Dipl)

If you are interested, please contact me for futher enquiries, also regarding other project possibilities and Bachelor projects.

Group members

Andreas Koch Matthias Frank Benjamin Hendricks Nikolay Kacharov Chef Postdoc Ph.D student (IMPRS, 1st year) Ph.D student (IMPRS, 2nd year) Chemical abundances / Halos (Ultracompact) dwarf galaxies Peculiar halo objects Abundances in globular clusters

Our group is also working closely with

• Sonderforschungsbereich 881 "The Milky Way System" (DFG collaborative research center)
• The Galactic Archaeology Group at LSW
• University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
• The Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena
• Lund Observatory, Sweden

and involved in

• The BRAVA Bulge Survey
• The 4MOST (4-m Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope) project
• The Gaia ESO Survey