The Galactic centre: a reflection of galaxy formation?

This projects aim to observe stars at the centre of the Milky Way in its Nuclear Star Cluster.

The Galactic centre lies at the nexus of most bigger events that has happened in our Galaxy and it is influenced by infalling stars and gasflow.

In a way the Galactic centre contains a record of the evolution of the Galaxy.In my research I show that stars in the Galacitc centre have properties that we do not find in other parts of the Galaxy, like finding a so-called heightened enhancements of alpha-elements when doing a chemical composition analysis of the stars.

Further, my recent pilot studies into young stars shows that they heave widely different properties that challanges our view of the Galactic centre implying that different stellar birth environments exists in close proximity to each other.I have obtained telescope time and will observe stars, and for their analysis the help of the galaxies group at Observatoire de la Cote d´Azur in France will be invaluable as they have extended experience of working on the Galactic centre.

Furhter, at Observatoire de la Cote d´Azur I will be able to apply for French time on instruments needed for my research, significantly increasing the likelyhood of obtaining more necessary data.The results obtained from my research will provide constraints usable to inform and improve theoretical work on understanding galaxy formation.

For this part of the research I plan to return to Sweden to work with Oscar Agertz, who is an expert on this.