[21.06] Dissecting the Milky Way with SDSS

AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 21 Stars Throughout the Milky Way
Poster, Monday, January 10, 2005, 9:20am-6:30pm, Exhibit Hall

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[21.06] Dissecting the Milky Way with SDSS

A.M. Brooks (U Washington), M. Juric (Princeton), Z. Ivezic (U Washington), R.H. Lupton, D. Schlegel, D. Finkbeiner, N. Padmanabhan (Princeton), C.M. Rockosi (UCSC/Lick Observatory), G.R. Knapp, J.E. Gunn (Princeton)

Using the photometric parallax method, we estimate the distances to 47 million stars detected by the SDSS, and map their three-dimensional number density distribution in the Galaxy. The currently available data sample a distance range from 100 pc to 15 kpc, and cover 6,000 deg² of sky. The derived stellar number density maps allow us to study Galactic structure without any a priori assumptions about its components. Yet, the data strongly favor a three-component Galaxy consisting of a halo, and thin and thick disks, with parameters similar to previous work. While roughly consistent with the standard model, we find that the measured density distribution shows a number of statistically significant deviations from it.

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