Galactic Archaeology with Astreroseismology

work explores the application of asteroseismology and associated analysis pipelines (in particular the Bayesian inference pipeline, Asteroseismic Inference on a Massive Scale) to the developing field of Galactic Archaeology. Galactic Archaeology is the study of the history of the Milky Way, using characteristics of stellar populations to provide clues as to its formation. Traditionally executed with spectroscopically and photometrically derived stellar parameters, the use of asteroseismology in this field is relatively new. With the use of data from the re-purposed Kepler mission, K2, high precision, asteroseismic information is becoming available for the first time for stellar populations in a wider variety of galactic radii and heights to map the radial and vertical structure of the Milky Way. Using this information, our current objective is to improve the temporal resolution of epochs of enhanced star formation in the vertical plane of the Milky Way, allowing one to disentangle events in the galaxy's past with greater confidence. Improving stellar age uncertainties from the current levels of >40% is key to this. Asteroseismology is capable of reducing this to < 20%. Achieving this level of precision and interpreting the resultant parameter distributions will provide great insight into the events that shaped our current galactic environment and have the potential to shed light on how the galaxy will continue to evolve.