Description
The oldest, most metal-poor stars in the Milky Way were born in pristine environments in the early Universe, and contain unique clues about the early formation and evolution of our Galaxy. The number density of these stars is expected to increase strongly towards the inner few kpc of the Milky Way, a challenging environment to study due to the distance, crowding, interstellar dust and an overwhelming majority of stars being metal-rich. In recent years we have finally started to explore the metal-poor inner Galaxy, thanks to dedicated metal-poor searches, data from the Gaia mission and spectroscopic surveys. I will present a brief overview of what we have learned about the ancient inner Milky Way to date, focusing on findings enabled by Gaia and looking forward to what GaiaNIR might bring.
