The primary driver for the HERMES multi-object high resolution spectrometer on the AAT is a Galactic archaeology survey of about a million stars with V < 14. I will give a brief overview of the instrument, Galactic archaeology and chemical tagging, and then describe the goals and plans for the GALAH survey.

This review discusses the structure and evolution of the Milky Way, in the context of opportunities provided by asteroseismology of red giants. The review is structured according to the main Galactic components: the thin disk, thick disk, stellar halo, and the Galactic bar/bulge. The review concludes with an overview of Galactic archaeology and chemical tagging, and a brief account of the upcoming HERMES survey with the AAT.

In preparation for the High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) chemical tagging survey of about a million Galactic FGK stars, we estimate the number of independent dimensions of the space defined by the stellar chemical element abundances [X/Fe]. This leads to a way to study the origin of elements from observed chemical abundances using principal component analysis.

The chemical abundance patterns of the oldest stars in the Galaxy are expected to contain residual signatures of the first stars in the early universe. Numerous studies attempt to explain the intrinsic abundance scatter observed in some metal-poor populations in terms of chemical inhomogeneities dispersed throughout the early Galactic medium due to discrete enrichment events. Just how the complex data and models are to be interpreted with respect to "progenitor yields" remains an open question. Here we show that stochastic chemical evolution models to date have overlooked a crucial fact.

The Galactic disk retains vast amount of information about how it came to be and how it evolved over cosmic time. However, we know very little about the secular processes associated with disk evolution. One major uncertainty is the extent to which stars migrate radially through the disk, thereby washing out signatures of their past (e.g., birth sites). Recent theoretical work finds that such "blurring" of the disk can be important if spiral arms are transient phenomena. Here we describe an experiment to determine the importance of diffusion from the Solar circle with cosmic time.

The long term goal of large-scale chemical tagging is to use stellar elemental abundances as a tracer of dispersed substructures of the Galactic disk. The identification of such lost stellar aggregates and the exploration of their chemical properties will be key in understanding the formation and evolution of the disk. Present day stellar structures such as open clusters and moving groups are the ideal testing grounds for the viability of chemical tagging, as they are believed to be the remnants of the original larger star-forming aggregates.

Stellar populations in galaxies are vast repositories of fossil information. In recent years it has become possible to consider high resolution spectroscopic surveys of millions of stars. New high resolution multi-object spectrographs on 4-8m class telescopes (HERMES, WFMOS) will allow us for the first time to make large and detailed chemical abundance surveys of stars in the Galactic disk, bulge and halo, and apply the techniques of chemical tagging to recovering the fossil information left over from galaxy assembly.

This paper presents abundances for 12 red giants of the old open cluster Collinder 261 based on spectra from the Very Large Telescope UVES. Abundances were derived for Na, Mg, Si, Ca, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zr, and Ba. We find that the cluster has a solar-level metallicity of [Fe/H]=-0.03 dex. However, most α- and s-process elements were found to be enhanced. The star-to-star scatter was consistent with the expected measurement uncertainty for all elements. The observed rms scatter is as follows: Na=0.07, Mg=0.05, Si=0.06, Ca=0.05, Mn=0.03, Fe=0.02, Ni=0.04, Zr=0.12, and Ba=0.03 dex.

We present abundances for a sample of F, G, and K dwarfs of the HR 1614 moving group based on high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra from the Anglo-Australian Telescope UCLES instrument. Our sample includes stars from Feltzing and Holmberg, as well as from Eggen. Abundances were derived for Na, Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Mn, Fe, Ni, Zr, Ba, Ce, Nd, and Eu. The α, Fe, and Fe-peak element abundances show a bimodal distribution, with four stars having solar metallicities, while the remaining 14 stars are metal-rich, [Fe/H]>=0.25 dex.

We present an abundance analysis of the heavy elements Zr, Ba, La, Ce, and Nd for Hyades F-K dwarfs based on high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra from Keck HIRES. The derived abundances show the stellar members to be highly uniform, although some elements show a small residual trend with temperature. The rms scatter for each element for the cluster members is as follows: Zr=0.055, Ba=0.049, Ce=0.025, La=0.025, and Nd=0.032 dex. This is consistent with the measurement errors and implies that there is little or no intrinsic scatter among the Hyades members.