We use the first Gaia data release, combined with the RAVE and APOGEE spectroscopic surveys, to investigate the origin of halo stars within. less than or similar to 3 kpc from the Sun. We identify halo stars kinematically as moving at a relative speed of at least 220 km s(-1) with respect to the local standard of rest. These stars are generally less metal-rich than the disk, but surprisingly, half of our halo sample is comprised of stars with [Fe/H] > -1. The orbital directions of these metal-rich halo stars are preferentially aligned with the disk rotation, in sharp contrast with the intrinsically isotropic orbital distribution of the metal-poor halo stars. We find similar properties in the Latte cosmological zoom-in simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy from the FIRE project. In Latte, metal-rich halo stars formed primarily inside of the solar circle, whereas lower-metallicity halo stars preferentially formed at larger distances (extending beyond the virial radius). This suggests that metal-rich halo stars in the solar neighborhood actually formed in situ within the Galactic disk, rather than having been accreted from satellite systems. These stars, currently on halo-like orbits, therefore have likely undergone substantial radial migration/heating.

The clustered nature of star formation should produce a high degree of structure in the combined phase and chemical space in the Galactic disk. To date, observed structure of this kind has been mostly limited to bound clusters and moving groups. In this paper, we present a new dynamical model of the Galactic disk that takes into account the clustered nature of star formation. This model predicts that the combined phase and chemical space is rich in substructure and that this structure is sensitive to both the precise nature of clustered star formation and the large-scale properties of the Galaxy. The model self-consistently evolves 4 billion stars over the last 5 Gyr in a realistic potential that includes an axisymmetric component, a bar, spiral arms, and giant molecular clouds. All stars are born in clusters with an observationally motivated range of initial conditions. As direct N-body calculations for billions of stars are computationally infeasible, we have developed a method of initializing star cluster particles to mimic the effects of direct N-body effects, while the actual orbit integrations are treated as test particles within the analytic potential. We demonstrate that the combination of chemical and phase space information is much more effective at identifying truly conatal populations than either chemical or phase space alone. Furthermore, we show that comoving pairs of stars are very likely to be conatal if their velocity separation is <2 km s(-1) and their metallicity separation is <0.05 dex. The results presented here bode well for harnessing the synergies between Gaia and spectroscopic surveys to reveal the assembly history of the Galactic disk.

It is challenging to reliably identify stars that were born together outside of actively star-forming regions and bound stellar systems. However, conatal stars should be present throughout the Galaxy, and their demographics can shed light on the clustered nature of star formation and the dynamical state of the disk. In previous work we presented a set of simulations of the Galactic disk that followed the clustered formation and dynamical evolution of 4 billion individual stars over the last 5 Gyr. The simulations predict that a high fraction of comoving stars with physical and 3D velocity separation of Delta r < 20 pc and Delta v < 1.5 km s(-1) are conatal. In this Letter, we use Gaia DR2 and LAMOST DR4 data to identify and study comoving pairs. We find that the distribution of relative velocities and separations of pairs in the data is in good agreement with the predictions from the simulation. We identify 111 comoving pairs in the solar neighborhood with reliable astrometric and spectroscopic measurements. These pairs show a strong preference for having similar metallicities when compared to random field pairs. We therefore conclude that these pairs were very likely born together. The simulations predict that conatal pairs are born in clusters that follow the overall cluster mass function and in relatively young (<1 Gyr) star clusters. Gaia will eventually deliver well-determined metallicities for the brightest stars, enabling the identification of thousands of conatal pairs due to disrupting star clusters in the solar neighborhood.

The archeological record of stars in the Milky Way opens a uniquely detailed window into the early formation and assembly of galaxies. Here we use 11,000 main-sequence turn-off stars with well-measured ages, [Fe/H],[alpha/Fe], and orbits from the H3 Survey and Gaia to time the major events in the early Galaxy. Located beyond the Galactic plane, 1 less than or similar to vertical bar Z vertical bar/kpc less than or similar to 4, this sample contains three chemically distinct groups: a low-metallicity population, and low-alpha and high-alpha groups at higher metallicity. The age and orbit distributions of these populations show that (1) the high-alpha group, which includes both disk stars and the in situ halo, has a star formation history independent of eccentricity that abruptly truncated 8.3 +/- 0.1 Gyr ago (z similar or equal to 1); (2) the low-metallicity population, which we identify as the accreted stellar halo, is on eccentric orbits and its star formation truncated 10.2.(+0.2)(-0.1) Gyr ago (z similar or equal to 2); (3) the low-alpha population is primarily on low-eccentricity orbits and the bulk of its stars formed less than 8 Gyr ago. These results suggest a scenario in which the Milky Way accreted a satellite galaxy at z approximate to 2 that merged with the early disk by z approximate to 1. This merger truncated star formation in the early high-alpha disk and perturbed a fraction of that disk onto halo-like orbits. The merger enabled the formation of a chemically distinct, low-alpha disk at z less than or similar to 1. The lack of any stars on halo-like orbits at younger ages indicates that this event was the last significant disturbance to the Milky Way disk.

We present MINESweeper, a tool to measure stellar parameters by jointly fitting observed spectra and broadband photometry to model isochrones and spectral libraries. This approach enables the measurement of spectrophotometric distances, in addition to stellar parameters such as T-eff, log g, [Fe/H], [alpha/Fe], and radial velocity. MINESweeper employs a Bayesian framework and can easily incorporate a variety of priors, including Gaia parallaxes. Mock data are fit in order to demonstrate how the precision of derived parameters depends on evolutionary phase and signal-tonoise ratio. We then fit a selection of data in order to validate the model outputs. Fits to a variety of benchmark stars including Procyon, Arcturus, and the Sun result in derived stellar parameters that are in good agreement with the literature. We then fit combined spectra and photometry of stars in the open and globular clusters M92, M13, M3, M107, M71, and M67. Derived distances, [Fe/H], [alpha/Fe], and log g-T-eff relations are in overall good agreement with literature values, although there are trends between metallicity and log g within clusters that point to systematic uncertainties at the approximate to 0.1 dex level. Finally, we fit a large sample of stars from the H3 Spectroscopic Survey in which high-quality Gaia parallaxes are also available. These stars are fit without the Gaia parallaxes so that the geometric parallaxes can serve as an independent test of the spectrophotometric distances. Comparison between the two reveals good agreement within their formal uncertainties after accounting for the Gaia zero-point uncertainties.

The tidal disruption of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy has generated a spectacular stream of stars wrapping around the entire Galaxy. We use data from Gaia and the H3 Stellar Spectroscopic Survey to identify 823 high-quality Sagittarius members based on their angular momenta. The H3 Survey is largely unbiased in metallicity, and so our sample of Sagittarius members is similarly unbiased. Stream stars span a wide range in [Fe/H] from -0.2 to -3.0, with a mean overall metallicity of <[F/H]> = -0.99. We identify a strong metallicity dependence to the kinematics of the stream members. At [Fe/H] > -0.8 nearly all members belong to the well-known cold (sigma(v) < 20 km s(-1)) leading and trailing arms. At intermediate metallicities (-1.9 < [Fe/H] < -0.8) a significant population (24%) emerges of stars that are kinematically offset from the cold arms. These stars also appear to have hotter kinematics. At the lowest metallicities ([Fe/H] less than or similar to -2), the majority of stars (69%) belong to this kinematically offset diffuse population. Comparison to simulations suggests that the diffuse component was stripped from the Sagittarius progenitor at earlier epochs, and therefore resided at larger radius on average than the colder metal-rich component. We speculate that this kinematically diffuse, low-metallicity population is the stellar halo of the Sagittarius progenitor system.

In the ?CDM paradigm, the Galactic stellar halo is predicted to harbor the accreted debris of smaller systems. To identify these systems, the H3 Spectroscopic Survey, combined with Gaia, is gathering 6D phase-space and chemical information in the distant Galaxy. Here we present a comprehensive inventory of structure within 50 kpc from the Galactic center using a sample of 5684 giants at alpha disk, the in situ halo (disk stars heated to eccentric orbits), Sagittarius (Sgr), Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus (GSE), the Helmi Streams, Sequoia, and Thamnos. Additionally, we identify the following new structures: (i) Aleph ([Fe/H] = -0.5), a low-eccentricity structure that rises a surprising 10 kpc off the plane, (ii) and (iii) Arjuna ([Fe/H] = -1.2) and I'itoi ([Fe/H] < -2), which comprise the high-energy retrograde halo along with Sequoia, and (iv) Wukong ([Fe/H] = -1.6), a prograde phase-space overdensity chemically distinct from GSE. For each structure, we provide [Fe/H], [alpha/Fe], and orbital parameters. Stars born within the Galaxy are a major component at80% of the halo is built by two massive (M similar to 10(8)-10(9)M) accreted dwarfs: GSE ([Fe/H] = -1.2) within 25 kpc and Sgr ([Fe/H] = -1.0) beyond 25 kpc. This explains the relatively high overall metallicity of the halo ([Fe/H] -1.2). We attribute greater than or similar to 95% of the sample to one of the listed structures, pointing to a halo built entirely from accreted dwarfs and heating of the disk.

We report the discovery of 15 stars in the H3 survey that lie, in projection, near the tip of the trailing gaseous Magellanic Stream (MS). The stars have Galactocentric velocities <-155 km s(-1), Galactocentric distances of 40 to 80 kpc (increasing along the MS), and [Fe/H] consistent with that of stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud. These 15 stars comprise 94% (15 of 16) of the H3 observed stars to date that have R-GAL > 37.5 kpc, -350 km s(-1) V-GSR < -155 km s(-1), and are not associated with the Sagittarius Stream. They represent a unique portion of the Milky Way's outer halo phase space distribution function and confirm that unrelaxed structure is detectable even at radii where H3 includes only a few hundred stars. Due to their statistical excess, their close association with the MS and HI compact clouds in the same region, both in position and velocity space, and their plausible correspondence with tidal debris in a published simulation, we identify these stars as debris of past Magellanic Cloud encounters. These stars are evidence for a stellar component of the tidal debris field far from the Clouds themselves and provide unique constraints on the interaction.

Ancient, very metal-poor (VMP) stars offer a window into the earliest epochs of galaxy formation and assembly. We combine data from the H3 Spectroscopic Survey and Gaia to measure metallicities, abundances of alpha elements, stellar ages, and orbital properties of a sample of 482 VMP ([Fe/H] < -2) stars in order to constrain their origins. This sample is confined to 1 less than or similar to divide Z divide less than or similar to 3 kpc from the Galactic plane. We find that >70% of VMP stars near the disk are on prograde orbits and this fraction increases toward lower metallicities. This result is unexpected if metal-poor stars are predominantly accreted from many small systems with no preferred orientation, as such a scenario would imply a mostly isotropic distribution. Furthermore, we find there is some evidence for higher fractions of prograde orbits among stars with lower [alpha/Fe]. Isochrone-based ages for main-sequence turn-off stars reveal that these VMP stars are uniformly old (12 Gyr) irrespective of the alpha abundance and metallicity, suggesting that the metal-poor population was not born from the same well-mixed gas disk. We speculate that the VMP population has a heterogeneous origin, including both in situ formation in the ancient disk and accretion from a satellite with the same direction of rotation as the ancient disk at early times. Our precisely measured ages for these VMP stars on prograde orbits show that the Galaxy has had a relatively quiescent merging history over most of cosmic time, and implies the angular momentum alignment of the Galaxy has been in place for at least 12 Gyr.

The origins of most stellar streams in the Milky Way are unknown. With improved proper motions provided by Gaia EDR3, we show that the orbits of 23 Galactic stellar streams are highly clustered in orbital phase space. Based on their energies and angular momenta, most streams in our sample can plausibly be associated with a specific (disrupted) dwarf galaxy host that brought them into the Milky Way. For eight streams we also identify likely globular cluster progenitors (four of these associations are reported here for the first time). Some of these stream progenitors are surprisingly far apart, displaced from their tidal debris by a few to tens of degrees. We identify stellar streams that appear spatially distinct, but whose similar orbits indicate they likely originate from the same progenitor. If confirmed as physical discontinuities, they will provide strong constraints on the mass loss from the progenitor. The nearly universal ex situ origin of existing stellar streams makes them valuable tracers of galaxy mergers and dynamical friction within the Galactic halo. Their phase-space clustering can be leveraged to construct a precise global map of dark matter in the Milky Way, while their internal structure may hold clues to the small-scale structure of dark matter in their original host galaxies.