Low-mass main sequence stars live for much of the Milky Way's age, retaining representatives of many generations, while phase mixing disperses their birth associations around their orbits. In an approximately axisymmetric galactic disk, a sufficiently complete local census can therefore sample the mixed annular stellar population at the Sun's radius despite its small volume. This is a representative local-radius sample, not automatically an unbiased whole-disc census: different vertical scale heights, selection effects and radial migration require corrections when inferring integrated population fractions.

Articles by others on the same topic (0)

There are currently no matching articles.