From Stellar Nurseries to Galactic Fossils: Uncovering the Milky Way's History with Open Clusters

by Dr Xiaoting Fu (符晓婷) (PMO CAS)

Friday 17 Oct 2025, 10:30 → 11:30 Europe/Stockholm

FC61 (AlbaNova Main Building)

Open clusters are born and evolve along the Milky Way plane. On them is imprinted the history of the Galactic disk, including its chemical and dynamical evolution. As a well-defined single stellar population, they also serve as an ideal laboratory for testing and calibrating our understanding of stellar physics. In this talk, I will present a large open cluster catalog with homogeneously determined parameters, created in synergy with Gaia and the LAMOST spectroscopic survey. I will discuss how we use this catalog as fossils to trace the evolution of the Milky Way's disk, probe the metallicity gradient of the so-called "Radcliffe wave" molecular clouds as nurseries of star clusters, and validate pipeline results from large Galactic surveys. Finally, I will discuss how the upcoming Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST) will help us unearth the missing open clusters in the outer Galactic disk, completing our picture of the Milky Way's formation.