We describe a major survey of the Milky Way halo designed to test for kinematic substructure caused by destruction of accreted satellites. We use the Washington photometric system to identify halo stars efficiently for spectroscopic followup. Tracers include halo giants (detectable out to more than 100 kpc), blue horizontal branch stars, halo stars near the main sequence turnoff, and the “blue ...

We report the first abundance analysis of 14 M giant stars in the Galactic bulge, based on R = 25, 000 infrared spectroscopy (1.5−1.8 μm) using NIRSPEC at the Keck telescope. Because some of the bulge M giants reach high luminosities and have very late spectral type, it has been suggested that they are the progeny of only the most metal rich bulge stars, or possibly members of a younger bulge p...

We analyse the kinematics of ∼ 400 000 stars for which the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) has obtained spectra. These stars, half giants and half dwarfs, mostly lie within 2.5 kpc of the Sun. We decompose the sample into hot and cold dwarfs, red-clump and non-clump giants. The kinematics of the clump giants are consistent with being identical with those of the giants as a whole. Without binn...

Gravitational microlensing provides a new technique for studying the surfaces of distant stars. Microlensing events are detected in real time and can be followed up with precision photometry and spectroscopy. This method is particularly adequate for studying red giants in the Galactic Bulge. We show that different properties of the stellar surface can be recovered from timedependent photometry ...