Modelling the Milky Way. I -- Method and first results fitting the thick disk and halo with DES-Y3 data

Understand

We present MWFitting, a method to fit the stellar components of the Galaxy by comparing Hess Diagrams (HDs) from TRILEGAL models to real data.

• We apply MWFitting to photometric data from the first three years of the Dark Energy Survey (DES).
• After removing regions containing known resolved stellar systems such as globular clusters, dwarf galaxies, nearby galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Sagittarius Stream, our main sample spans a total area of $\sim$2,300 deg$^2$ distributed across the DES footprint.
• We further explore a smaller subset ($\sim$ 1,300 deg$^2$) that excludes all regions with known stellar streams and stellar overdensities.