The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) and its successor, APOGEE‐2

Abstract

AbstractThe Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) of Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS‐III) has produced a large catalog of high resolution (R = 22 500), high quality (S/N > 100), infrared (H ‐band) spectra for stars throughout all stellar populations of the Milky Way, including in regions veiled by significant dust opacity. APOGEE's half million spectra collected on > 163 000 unique stars, with time series information via repeat visits to each star, are being applied to numerous problems in stellar populations, Galactic astronomy, and stellar astro‐physics. From among the early results of the APOGEE project – which span from measurements of Galactic dynamics, to multi‐element chemical maps of the disk and bulge, new views of the interstellar medium, explorations of stellar companions, the chemistry of star clusters, and the discovery of rare stellar species – I highlight a few results that demonstrate APOGEE's unique ability to sample and characterize the Galactic disk and bulge. Plans are now under way for an even more ambitious successor to APOGEE: the six‐year, dual‐hemisphere APOGEE‐2 project. Both phases of APOGEE feature a strong focus on targets having asteroseismological measurements from either Kepler or CoRoT, from which it is possible to derive relatively precise stellar ages. The combined APOGEE and APOGEE‐2 databases of stellar chemistry, dynamics and ages constitute an unusually comprehensive, systematic and homogeneous resource for constraining models of Galactic evolution.