We test four competing models that aim to explain the nature of stars in spiral galaxies that are well away (>1kpc) from the midplane, the so-called thick disk: the stars may have gotten there through orbital migration, through satellite mergers and accretion, or through heating of pre-existing thin disk stars. The eccentricity distribution of thick disk stars has recently been proposed as a diagnostic to differentiate between these mechanisms. Drawing on SDSS-DR7, we have assembled a sample of 31535 G-dwarfs with six-dimensional phase-space information and metallicities and have derived the orbital eccentricities for them.

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/725/L186/table2 (Observed and derived properties of our SEGUE stars)