Austin Hinkel Award: Galactic Archaeology with Gaia: Exploring Known Galactic Structures and Uncovering New Ones

I propose a deeper study of the structures and assumed symmetries of the Milky Way in order to glean insights into various perturbations in our galaxy. Using a data set such as Gaia in order to look for new galactic structures and patterns is an extremely tall task, one that is quite a bit more involved than finding the enormous structures which have been known about for decades. The effort is very much worth the time, however, given the wealth of new information it can reveal about our galaxy’s dynamic history. With the method of searching for symmetry breaking effects developed in previous projects, my collaborators and I intend to uncover these new structures.