Chemical data of nearly 1 million stars published by Australian researchers

CANBERRA, Oct. 2 (Xinhua) — Australian researchers have released data on the chemical composition of nearly 1 million stars.
Researchers said on Wednesday that the dataset from the major stellar mapping survey will form the basis of decades of research into the origins and development of the galaxy.
The data was collected over 10 years by astronomers from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3D (ASTRO 3D), a government-funded collaboration between nine universities led by the Australian National University (ANU).
Researchers used the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES), which is connected to the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT), to make 1.08 million observations of 920,000 stars.
“We have measured the elements within these stars, like carbon, nitrogen, oxygen,” Sven Buder from ASTRO 3D and ANU said in a media release.
“This data will help us figure out how these elements are produced in stars, which is fundamental to explaining the origins of the building blocks of life.”
It marked the fourth release of data from the Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) project and coincided with the 50th birthday of AAT, Australia’s largest optical telescope.
Emma Ryan-Weber, director of ASTRO 3D, said that the data was like stellar DNA and can be used to determine where a star has come from, its age and its movements to gain a deeper understanding of how galaxies are formed.
The new data will also be used to train the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) in astronomy. ■