Our September 13 GAAC meeting will feature Center for Astrophysics Ph.D candidate Vedant Chandra and "A Biography of the Milky Way." Chandra's talk will describe a recent revolution in our understanding of our Galaxy. New observatories have measured the locations, motions, and chemical properties of millions of stars in the Milky Way in exquisite detail, and these data have enabled us to reconstruct not only the current detailed 3D structure of the galaxy, but also infer its past history and evolution. What did the infant Milky Way look like, soon after the Big Bang? When and why did it become a disk galaxy? Has it merged with and consumed other galaxies in the past? Chandra's work seeks to answer these questions and more. Join us at 8:00 pm on the 13th, in person at the Lanesville Community Center <https://maps.app.goo.gl/pntHAopkhrjho6XR9> or on Zoom. We'll have a fun night catching up on all sorts of new science concerning our home galaxy, with all the usual snacks, conversation and general merriment. *Vedant Chandra works as a part of the* *Sloan Digital Sky Survey and H3 Survey <http://h3survey.rc.fas.harvard.edu/> collaborations, and also at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy <https://www.mpia.de/en> on understanding the formation of the Milky Way. * ________________ Zoom info follows: Time: Sep 13, 2024 08:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada). Doors open at 7:45. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86506324763?pwd=k6jQpBaX7kwM7g3hpFxzTqrmsGGRe8.1 Meeting ID: 865 0632 4763 Passcode: 805448 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdlKKR8CKL