We present the discovery of a large population of stellar streams that surround the inner Galaxy, found in the Gaia DR2 catalog using the new STREAMFINDER algorithm. Here we focus on the properties ...of eight new high-significance structures found at heliocentric distances between 1 and 10 kpc and at Galactic latitudes , named Slidr, Sylgr, Ylgr, Fimbulthul, Svöl, Fjörm, Gjöll, and Leiptr. Spectroscopic measurements of seven of the streams confirm the detections, which are based on Gaia astrometry and photometry alone, and show that these streams are predominantly metal-poor. The sample possesses diverse orbital properties, although most of the streams appear to be debris of inner-halo globular clusters. Many more candidate streams are visible in our maps but require follow-up spectroscopy to confirm their nature. We also explain in detail the workings of the algorithm and gauge the incidence of false detections by running the algorithm on a smooth model of the Gaia catalog.
Abstract
The Milky Way halo was predominantly formed by the merging of numerous progenitor galaxies. However, our knowledge of this process is still incomplete, especially in regard to the total ...number of mergers, their global dynamical properties and their contribution to the stellar population of the Galactic halo. Here, we uncover the Milky Way mergers by detecting groupings of globular clusters, stellar streams, and satellite galaxies in action (
J
) space. While actions fully characterize the orbits, we additionally use the redundant information on their energy (
E
) to enhance the contrast between the groupings. For this endeavor, we use Gaia EDR3‒based measurements of 170 globular clusters, 41 streams, and 46 satellites to derive their
J
and
E
. To detect groups, we use the ENLINK software, coupled with a statistical procedure that accounts for the observed phase-space uncertainties of these objects. We detect a total of
N
= 6 groups, including the previously known mergers Sagittarius, Cetus, Gaia‒Sausage/Enceladus, LMS-1/Wukong, Arjuna/Sequoia/I’itoi, and one new merger that we call Pontus. All of these mergers, together, comprise 62 objects (≈25% of our sample). We discuss their members, orbital properties, and metallicity distributions. We find that the three most-metal-poor streams of our galaxy—“C-19” (Fe/H = −3.4 dex), “Sylgr” (Fe/H = −2.9 dex), and “Phoenix” (Fe/H = −2.7 dex)—are associated with LMS-1/Wukong, showing it to be the most-metal-poor merger. The global dynamical atlas of Milky Way mergers that we present here provides a present-day reference for galaxy formation models.
ABSTRACT
Using deep ($11.2\, \rm{h}$) VLT/MUSE data from the MEGAFLOW survey, we report the first detection of extended $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ emission from a galaxy’s halo that is probed by a ...quasar sightline. The $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}\, \lambda \lambda \, 2796, 2803$ emission around the z = 0.702 galaxy ($\log (M_*/\rm{M_\odot })=10.05_{-0.11}^{+0.15}{}$) is detected out to $\approx 25\, \hbox{kpc}$ from the central galaxy and covers $1.0\times 10^3\, \hbox{kpc}^2$ above a surface brightness of $14\times 10^{-19}\, \rm{erg}\, \rm{s}^{-1}\, \rm{cm}^{-2}\, \rm{arcsec}^{-2}{}$ ($2\, \sigma$; integrated over $1200\, \rm{km\, s}^{-1}= 19\mathring{\rm A}$ and averaged over $1.5\, \rm{arcsec}^{2}$). The $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ emission around this highly inclined galaxy (i ≃ 75 deg) is strongest along the galaxy’s projected minor axis, consistent with the $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ gas having been ejected from the galaxy into a bi-conical structure. The quasar sightline, which is aligned with the galaxy’s minor axis, shows strong $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ absorption ($\hbox{$EW_0^{\lambda 2796}$}{}=1.8{}\, \mathring{\rm A}$) at an impact parameter of $39{}\, \hbox{kpc}$ from the galaxy. Comparing the kinematics of both the emission and the absorption − probed with VLT/UVES − to the expectation from a simple toy model of a bi-conical outflow, we find good consistency when assuming a relatively slow outflow ($v_\rm{out}=130{}\, \rm{km\, s}^{-1}$). We investigate potential origins of the extended $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ emission using simple toy models. With continuum scattering models we encounter serious difficulties in explaining the luminosity of the $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ halo and in reconciling density estimates from emission and absorption. Instead, we find that shocks might be a more viable source to power the extended $\rm{Mg\, \small {II}}$ (and non-resonant $\rm{O\, \small {II}}$) emission.
ABSTRACT
We investigate whether the dust content of the circum-galactic medium (CGM) depends on the location of the quasar sightline with respect to the galaxy major-axis using 13 galaxy-Mg ii ...absorber pairs (9–81 kpc distance) from the MusE GAs FLOw and Wind (MEGAFLOW) survey at 0.4 < z < 1.4. The dust content of the CGM is obtained from Zn/Fe using ultraviolet and visual echelle spectrograph data. When a direct measurement of Zn/Fe is unavailable, we estimate the dust depletion from a method that consists in solving for the depletion from multiple singly ionized ions (e.g. Mn ii, Cr ii, and Zn ii) since each ion depletes on dust grains at different rates. We find a positive correlation between the azimuthal angle and Zn/Fe with a Pearson’s r = 0.70 ± 0.14. The sightlines along the major axis show Zn/Fe < 0.5, whereas the Zn/Fe is > 0.8 along the minor axis. These results suggest that the CGM along the minor axis is on average more metal enriched (by ≈ 1 dex) than the gas located along the major axis of galaxies provided that dust depletion is a proxy for metallicity. This anisotropic distribution is consistent with recent results on outflow and accretion in hydro-dynamical simulations.
Abstract
Stellar streams produced from dwarf galaxies provide direct evidence of the hierarchical formation of the Milky Way. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of the
LMS-1
stellar ...stream, that we detect by searching for wide streams in the Gaia EDR3 data set using the
STREAMFINDER
algorithm. This stream was recently discovered by Yuan et al. We detect LMS-1 as a 60° long stream to the north of the galactic bulge, at a distance of ∼20 kpc from the Sun, together with additional components that suggest that the overall stream is completely wrapped around the inner Galaxy. Using spectroscopic measurements from the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, we infer that the stream is very metal-poor (〈Fe/H〉 = −2.1) with a significant metallicity dispersion (
σ
Fe/H
= 0.4), and it possesses a large radial velocity dispersion (
σ
v
= 20 ± 4 km s
−1
). These estimates together imply that LMS-1 is a dwarf galaxy stream. The orbit of LMS-1 is close to polar, with an inclination of 75° to the galactic plane. Both the orbit and metallicity of LMS-1 are remarkably similar to the globular clusters NGC 5053, NGC 5024, and the stellar stream
Indus
. These findings make LMS-1 an important contributor to the stellar population of the inner Milky Way halo.
We present an analysis of wide-field photometric surveys of the Palomar 5 globular cluster and its stellar stream, based on g- and r-band measures together with narrow-band DDO 51 photometry. In this ...first study, we use the deep (g, r) data to measure the incidence of gaps and peaks along the stream. Examining the star-counts profile of the stream plus contaminating populations, we find no evidence for significant underdensities, and find only a single significant overdensity. This is at odds with earlier studies based on matched-filter maps derived from shallower SDSS data if the contaminating population possesses plausible spatial properties. The lack of substantial substructure along the stream may be used in future dynamical simulations to examine the incidence of dark matter sub-halos in the Galactic halo. We also present a measurement of the relative distances along the stream, which we use to create the deepest wide-field map of this system to date.
ABSTRACT We present a comprehensive analysis of the structural properties and luminosities of the 23 dwarf spheroidal galaxies that fall within the footprint of the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological ...Survey (PAndAS). These dwarf galaxies represent the large majority of Andromeda's known satellite dwarf galaxies and cover a wide range in luminosity ( or ) and surface brightness ( mag arcsec−2). We confirm most previous measurements, but we find And XIX to be significantly larger than before ( , ) and cannot derive parameters for And XXVII as it is likely not a bound stellar system. We also significantly revise downward the luminosities of And XV and And XVI, which are now or . Finally, we provide the first detailed analysis of Cas II/And XXX, a fairly faint system ( ) of typical size ( ), located in close proximity to the two bright elliptical dwarf galaxies NGC 147 and NGC 185. Combined with the set of homogeneous distances published in an earlier contribution, our analysis dutifully tracks all relevant sources of uncertainty in the determination of the properties of the dwarf galaxies from the PAndAS photometric catalog. We further publish the posterior probability distribution functions of all the parameters we fit for in the form of MCMC chains available online; these inputs should be used in any analysis that aims to remain truthful to the data and properly account for covariance between parameters.
ABSTRACT
We present results from our on-going MusE GAs FLOw and Wind (MEGAFLOW) survey, which consists of 22 quasar lines of sight, each observed with the integral field unit MUSE and the UVES ...spectrograph at the ESO Very Large Telescopes (VLT). The goals of this survey are to study the properties of the circumgalactic medium around z ∼ 1 star-forming galaxies. The absorption-line selected survey consists of 79 strong Mg ii absorbers (with rest-frame equivalent width ≳0.3 Å) and, currently, 86 associated galaxies within 100 projected kpc of the quasar with stellar masses (M⋆) from 109 to 1011 M⊙. We find that the cool halo gas traced by Mg ii is not isotropically distributed around these galaxies from the strong bi-modal distribution in the azimuthal angle of the apparent location of the quasar with respect to the galaxy major axis. This supports a scenario in which outflows are bi-conical in nature and co-exist with a co-planar gaseous structure extending at least up to 60–80 kpc. Assuming that absorbers near the minor axis probe outflows, the current MEGAFLOW sample allowed us to select 26 galaxy–quasar pairs suitable for studying winds. From this sample, using a simple geometrical model, we find that the outflow velocity only exceeds the escape velocity when M⋆ ≲ 4 × 109 M⊙, implying the cool material is likely to fall back except in the smallest haloes. Finally, we find that the mass loading factor η, the ratio between the ejected mass rate and the star formation rate, appears to be roughly constant with respect to the galaxy mass.
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