Vintergatans centrum med MOONS

How galaxies form and evolve, and especially how the Milky Way has evolved, is one of the large questions in astrophysics.

According to cosmological models, it is clear that one of the most interesting places to investigate, in this context, is a galaxy’s center.

The structures found there, in most spiral galaxies, consist of a nuclear stellar disk surrounding a massive nuclear star cluster, with a supermassive black hole at the center. These structures have been part of the entire galaxy´s evolution from the beginning and have continuously been active.

Galactic centers are therefore very interesting to study.In this project we want to investigate the formation of the inner structures of the Milky Way though the first comprehensive and most accurate chemo-dynamic spectroscopic study of the inner stellar populations. This is possible with the new MOONS survey, which will penetrate the obscuring dust by observing in the near-infrared.

The MOONS spectrometer – to be mounted on ESO´s 8-metre VLT-telescope in Chile early next year– will observe more than 13,000 red giants, providing an unprecedented window to the Galactic Center.

Through my membership in the MOONS consortium, the observations of the Galactic Center will be made through the Guaranteeed Time Observations (GTO) programme.

This participation allows us to not only do breakthrough science in this field, but to also open up a new dimension within the complex field of galaxy formation research.