A new Picture for the Galaxy Formation

The observational constraints are of fundamental importance to build a realistic chemical evolution model. With respect to these constraints the last years have been of crucial importance and, in the case of the Milky Way, the new observational data required a revision of the previous chemical evolution models (see Chiappini et al., 1997 – CMG97) and Pagel and Tautvaisiene, 1995 – PT95). The results obtained by CMG97 from a careful comparison between model predictions and observational constraints strongly suggest that the previously adopted picture for the Galaxy formation in which the gas shed from the halo was the main contributor to the thin disk formation, is not valid anymore. With our detailed chemical evolution model we are able to put some constraints on the IMF variation and on the Deuterium primordial value. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.