March 9
Jo Bovy (IAS)
New Observational Constraints on the Structure
of the Milky Way Disk
Observations
of the structure and kinematics of different stellar populations in the Milky
Way's disk provide a unique perspective on disk formation and evolution. I will
discuss how current and future data sets that provide detailed kinematics and
elemental abundances beyond the solar neighborhood lead to qualitatively new
tests of internal and external disk evolution models. In particular, I will show
recent results from a dissection into mono-abundance components of the Galactic
disk based on SDSS/SEGUE data. These results show that the individual
components are simple, but exhibit very different spatial structure, and they
lend direct observational support for inside-out formation models for galactic
disks.