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Is the Dynamical History at Odds with the Chemical History?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2016

F. Matteucci
F. Matteucci*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universita' di Trieste, Via G.B. Tiepolo, 11 TRIESTE

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The paper of Eggen, Lynden-Bell and Sandage (1962)(hereafter ELS) titled “Evidence from the motion of old stars that the Galaxy collapsed” was the first attempt to understand the formation and evolution of our Galaxy. From a study of a kinematically selected sample of high velocity stars, ELS had found a remarkable correlation between chemical abundance and orbital eccentricity, in the sense that stars with the largest ultraviolet excess (a measure of stellar metallicity, in particular Fe), i.e. the lowest metallicity, are invariably moving in highly elliptical orbits. As the average < [Fe/H] > (in the usual notation [Fe/H] = log(Fe/H)∗ – log(Fe/H)⊙) is expected to increase with time, as a consequence of the progressive chemical enrichment of the gas, stars with the lowest [Fe/H] are, on average, the oldest. ELS also found a correlation between abundance and motion of stars perpendicular to the Galactic plane. This correlation suggests a continuous decrease of the perpendicular velocity with decreasing [Fe/H]. To explain these relations ELS proposed that the Galaxy collapsed from a protocloud to a thin disk on a timescale of a few times 108 years, with progressive chemical enrichment as the collapse proceeded. This model was subsequently criticized mainly because of selection effects in their data, i.e. given the data available to ELS one would not expect the sample to contain low abundance, low orbital eccentricity objects even if they existed. They would be absent from the high velocity catalog they used. In addition, the ELS simple model did not account for the fact that almost half of the halo stars have retrograde orbits. This fact led Larson (1969) to consider models of clumpy and turbulent protogalaxies with collapse times that sometimes exceeded 1 Gyr.

Type
Chapter 5: How Did the Milky Way Form?
Information
Symposium - International Astronomical Union , Volume 169: Unsolved Problems of the Milky Way , 1996 , pp. 367 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © Kluwer 1996 

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