Chronologically dating the early assembly of the Milky Way

[en] The standard cosmological model predicts that galaxies are built through hierarchical assembly on cosmological timescales1,2. The Milky Way, like other disk galaxies, underwent violent mergers and accretion of small satellite galaxies in its early history. Owing to Gaia Data Release 23 and spectroscopic surveys4, the stellar remnants of such mergers have been identified5–7. The chronological dating of such events is crucial to uncover the formation and evolution of the Galaxy at high redshift, but it has so far been challenging due to difficulties in obtaining precise ages for these oldest stars. Here we combine asteroseismology—the study of stellar oscillations—with kinematics and chemical abundances to estimate precise stellar ages (~11%) for a sample of stars observed by the Kepler space mission8. Crucially, this sample includes not only some of the oldest stars that were formed inside the Galaxy but also stars formed externally and subsequently accreted onto the Milky Way. Leveraging this resolution in age, we provide compelling evidence in favour of models in which the Galaxy had already formed a substantial population of its stars (which now reside mainly in its thick disk) before the infall of the satellite galaxy Gaia-Enceladus/Sausage5,6 around 10 billion years ago. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.

Research center :

STAR - Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research - ULiège

Disciplines :

Space science, astronomy & astrophysics

Author, co-author :

Montalbán, J.; School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom

Mackereth, J.T.; School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

Miglio, A.; School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università degli Studi di Bologna, Bologna, Italy, INAF – Astrophysics and Space Science Observatory Bologna, Bologna, Italy

Vincenzo, F.; School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom, Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States, Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States

Chiappini, C.; Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Potsdam, Germany

Buldgen, Gaël ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Astrophysique stellaire théorique et astérosismologie ; Observatoire de Genève, Université de Genève, Sauverny, Switzerland

Mosser, B.; LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, Meudon, France

Grötsch-Noels, Arlette ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Astrophysique stellaire théorique et astérosismologie

Scuflaire, Richard ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département d'astrophysique, géophysique et océanographie (AGO) > Astrophysique stellaire théorique et astérosismologie

Vrard, M.; Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, United States, Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto, CAUP, Porto, Portugal

More authors (9 more)

Language :

English

Title :

Chronologically dating the early assembly of the Milky Way

Publication date :

2021

Journal title :

Nature Astronomy

eISSN :

2397-3366

Publisher :

Nature Research

Volume :

Issue :

Pages :

640 - 647

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Funding text :

J.M., J.T.M., A.M., F.V. and E.W. acknowledge support from the ERC Consolidator Grant funding scheme (project ASTEROCHRONOMETRY, G.A. no. 772293). F.V. acknowledges the support of a Fellowship from the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics at The Ohio State University. M.V. is supported by FEDER - Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional through COMPETE2020 - Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização by grants PTDC/FIS-AST/30389/2017 and POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030389. C.C. acknowledges partial support from DFG Grant CH1188/2-1 and from the ChETEC COST Action (CA16117), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). G.B. acknowledges fundings from the SNF AMBIZIONE grant no. 185805 (Seismic inversions and modelling of transport processes in stars) and from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 833925, project STAREX). G.R.D. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (CartographY GA 804752). M.B.N. acknowledges support from the UK Space Agency. O.J.H. acknowledges the support of the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). This article made use of AIMS, a software for fitting stellar pulsation data, developed in the context of the SPACEINN network, funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme. This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular, the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement. The computations described in this paper were performed using the University of Birmingham’s BlueBEAR HPC service, which provides a high-performance computing service to the university’s research community. See http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/bear for more details. We thank S. McGee for reading and commenting on the manuscript.

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