Seminario de Astronomía "Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE): Overview, Main Goals, Data, and main Science Results"

CHARLISTA:
Dr. Felipe Santana
Universidad de Chile

TÍTULO: Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE): Overview, Main Goals, Data, and main Science Results.

ABSTRACT: I will present the most important aspects about the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) Survey. APOGEE is one of the three projects of SDSS-IV. The main idea of the catalogue is to make a spectroscopic, homogeneous, mapping of all the major components of the Milky Way. For that is currently taking high resolution (R~22500), near-infrared (λ=1.51-1.70 μm) spectra for about 300.000 stars from the Galaxy. To span a wide variety of Galactic latitude and longitude, APOGEE data is taken from both 2.5-meter Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory (Apogee-2N) and the Irénée du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory (Apogee-2S).

The main scientific goal of APOGEE is to derive radial velocities, chemical abundances, structural and kinematical parameters of Milky Way stars, to analyze the dynamical and chemical origin and evolution of the different components of the Galaxy.

In this presentation I will summarize the main goals of the survey, the procedures to obtain, and process the data, and the most important scientific results obtained so far. I will also describe how Chilean scientist can get involved in old and new APOGEE projects, and why this survey represent a great opportunity for the Chilean community.

Rene A. Mendez
Seminar Coordinator
DAS/UChile - rmendez@uchile.cl