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Morrison receives National Science Foundation award to study Milky Way's history

Posted 31-Aug-2006


Case astronomer Heather Morrison has received NSF funding for her project "The Four-Dimensional Galaxy", a multi-faceted study of old stars in the Galaxy's halo and outer disk.

A large part of this project is the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's SEGUE project, which is producing samples of unprecedented size of stars in the Galaxy. This image shows some early results from the project, where Belokurov et al have identified star streams stretching across the Galaxy. Morrison and collaborators will obtain velocities for stars in the streams, which will allow them to calculate their orbits and infer their history.


(Belokurov et al, SDSS Project)

For more information about the SDSS SEGUE project, see http://www.sdss.org/segue/aboutsegue.html