Mapping the Distant and Metal-Poor Milky Way with SDSS-V

TL;DR

SDSS-V's all-sky low-resolution spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way's stellar halo enables detailed stellar parameter estimation, mapping of distant substructures, and insights into Galactic dynamics.

Contribution

Introduction of a stellar parameter pipeline and the BOSS-MINESweeper catalog for SDSS-V, facilitating comprehensive Galactic studies.

Findings

Validated stellar parameters across diverse stars

Identified chemically peculiar stars and distant halo substructures

Mapped the Milky Way's large-scale dynamics

Abstract

The fifth-generation Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) is conducting the first all-sky low-resolution spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way's stellar halo. We describe the stellar parameter pipeline for the SDSS-V halo survey, which simultaneously models spectra, broadband photometry, and parallaxes to derive stellar parameters, metallicities, alpha abundances, and distances. The resulting BOSS-MINESweeper catalog is validated across a wide range of stellar parameters and metallicities using star clusters and a comparison to high-resolution spectroscopic surveys. We demonstrate several scientific capabilities of this dataset: identifying the most chemically peculiar stars in our Galaxy, discovering and mapping distant halo substructures, and measuring the all--sky dynamics of the Milky Way on the largest scales. The BOSS-MINESweeper catalog for SDSS DR19 is publicly available and will be updated for future data releases.