Reality of Moving Groups in the Galaxy

The existence of old dispersed stellar groups within the Milky Way disk is still controversial. Are they the debris of ancient star-forming aggregates, or short-lived artifacts of dynamical origin? With detailed elemental abundance measurements from high quality spectroscopic data, we show that at least one such old dispersed stellar group is a true relic of an earlier phase of star formation. The identification of other such relic structures will provide essential information for probing the evolutionary history of the Milky Way disk.
Comment: Proceedings of Conference on the Formation and Evolution of Galaxy Disks. ASP Conference Series, Vol. 396, 2008 J. G. Funes, S.J., and E. M. Corsini, eds