Collaborative Research: Getting the Most from LAMOST

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY

Investigators

Abstract

The scientists have several research goals. The first goal is ?Understanding the causes of the very high speeds and directions of some stars in the outer reaches of our Galaxy?. The second goal is ?Discovering the patters of motions of groups of stars in disk of our Galaxy?. Their final goal is ?Searching for more of the remarkable hypervelocity stars, which are probably ejected from groups of stars, when pairs of stars collide?. These hypervelocity stars are being thrown out of the galaxy. The US scientists will observe 8 million Galactic stars from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) survey, a US-China collaboration. The scientists will give the public lectures, to communicate about the similarities and differences between life in Asia and the US, including insights gained from creating a successful collaboration. Visiting scholars will give presentations for US students on Asian history, culture, language, and lifestyle. Hypervelocity stars probe of a wide range of Galactic sciences, on both small and large scales. The number density, velocity, and stellar type distributions of HVSs can reveal the environment around the massive black hole at the center of our Galaxy. Counting the number of hypervelocity stars gives clues to the growth of the central black hole. By measuring the trajectory of these hypervelocity stars, they measured the shape of dark matter halo potential of the Galaxy.