Galactic Halo Substructure in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Ancient Tidal Stream from the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy

By R. Ibata, M. Irwin, Geraint F. Lewis, A. Stolte. 2000

206 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two studies have recently reported the discovery of pronounced halo substructure in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) commissioning data. Here we show that this halo substructure is, almost in its entirety, due to the expected tidal stream torn off the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy during the course of its many close encounters with the Milky Way. This interpretation makes strong predictions on the kinematics and distances of these stream stars. Comparison of the structure in old horizontal branch stars, detected by the SDSS team, with the carbon star structure discovered in our own survey, indicates that this halo stream is of comparable age to the Milky Way. It would appear that the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy have been a strongly interacting system for most of their existence. Once complete, the SDSS will provide a unique data set with which to constrain the dynamical evolution of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy; it will also strongly constrain the mass distribution of the outer Milky Way.

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5ca1ff4a6c973a9aab6fcdf46b87d2a99266fb6c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

The stellar halo of the Galaxy (2008, background): “Mart́ınez-Delgado et al. (2001) using deep color-magnitude diagrams detected the presence of a main sequence and turn-off at similar locations, and Ibata et al. (2001) using carbon stars were able to trace the stream over an extended portion of the sky.”
The Ghost of Sagittarius and Lumps in the Halo of the Milky Way (2001, methodology): “Using exactly the same procedure as for S341+57 22.5 (Sagittarius), we generate a color-magnitude image for S167 54 21.5, which has also been tentatively identified as a piece of the Sagittarius stream by Ibata et al. (2001a).”
Building Up the Globular Cluster System of the Milky Way: The Contribution of the Sagittarius Galaxy (2002, methodology): “The derived orbit has been successfully compared with the observed position of the Sgr Stream (Ibata et al. 2001a,b), providing also remarkable indications that the dark halo of the Milky Way is nearly spherical.”
Galactic stellar haloes in the CDM model (2009, background): “Notable substructures in the Milky Way halo include the broad stream of stars from the disrupting Sagittarius dwarf galaxy (Ibata, Gilmore & Irwin 1994; Ibata et al. 2001), extensive and C© 2010 The Authors.”
A Low-Latitude Halo Stream around the Milky Way (2003, background): “This diagram is designed to be similar in appearance to those of Ibata et al. (2001b) for the Sagittarius stream.”
Photometry and the Metallicity Distribution of the Outer Halo of M31. II. The 30 Kiloparsec Field (2001, background): “Our field M3 is located just within the outer extent of the M31 halo survey of Ibata et al. (2001).”
Deciphering the Last Major Invasion of the Milky Way (2002, background): “…inside the Milky Way Galaxy, is losing a significant stellar mass through tidal effects (Ibata et al. 1997), forming star streams in the halo (Mateo, Morrison & Olszewski 1998; Ibata et al. 2001; Yanny et al. 2000), but having little effect on the present structure of the bulk of the Galactic disk.”
LSST: From Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products (2008, background): “• Mapping the metallicity, kinematics and spatial profile of the Sgr dwarf tidal stream (e.g., Ibata et al. 2001; Majewski et al. 2003; Law, Johnston & Majewski 2005; Belokurov et al. 2014) and the Magellanic stream (Zaritsky et al. 2004).”
Comparing the properties of local globular cluster systems: implications for the formation of the Galactic halo (2004, background): “For example the Sagittarius dSph itself has left a debris stream fully encircling the Galaxy (e.g., Ibata et al. (2001); Martı́nezDelgado et al. (2001; 2004); Newberg et al. (2002; 2003)), while the “Monoceros Ring” identified by Newberg et al. (2002) and Yanny et al. (2003) (sometimes known as the…”
A COMPLETE SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY OF THE MILKY WAY SATELLITE SEGUE 1: THE DARKEST GALAXY (2010, background): “The most recent wrap of the streams has been detected robustly in numerous ways (e.g., Ibata et al. 2001; Vivas et al. 2001; Dohm-Palmer et al. 2001; Bellazzini et al. 2003; Newberg et al. 2003; Majewski et al. 2003; Belokurov et al. 2006).”
The New Galaxy: Signatures of Its Formation (2002, background): “The halo of M31, for example, follows the r1/4 law (Pritchet & van den Bergh 1994) and is much more metal rich in the mean than the halo of our Galaxy (Durrell et al. 2001) although it does have stars that are very metal weak.”
Stellar Abundance and Galactic Chemical Evolution through LAMOST Spectroscopic Survey (2006, background): “These include, among others, the “Spaghetti” survey (Morrison et al. 2000), the APM (Automatic Plate Measuring) carbon star survey (Totten & Irwin 1998; Totten et al. 2000; Ibata et al. 2001a) and the SDSS (Yanny et al. 2000; Ivezic et al. 2000; Ibata et al. 2001b).”
Great Circle Tidal Streams: Evidence for a Nearly Spherical Massive Dark Halo around the Milky Way (2000, background): “In a companion paper (Ibata et al. 2001), we argue that those stars are most likely the RR Lyrae members of the Sagittarius stream discussed in this article.”
A Matched-Filter Analysis of the Tidal Tails of the Globular Cluster Palomar 5 (2002, background): “Ibata et al. (2001) identify the structure from its distance and position on the sky as part of the tidal stream of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy.”
The Origin of the Bifurcation in the Sagittarius Stream (2006, methodology): “Ibata et al. (2001a) and Newberg et al. (2002, 2003) made early detections of Sgr tidal debris in data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS; see Hogg et al. 2001; Stoughton et al. 2002; Smith et al. 2002; Pier et al. 2003; Ivezić et al. 2004; Gunn et al. 2006).”
Internal Kinematics of the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy (2005, unknown): “Further, the Sagittarius dSph, at a Milky Way distance of∼ 16 kpc, is clearly undergoing tidal disruption (Ibata et al. 1994; Mateo et al. 1996; Ibata et al. 2001; Majewski et al. 2003), and so presents at least one case in which tides dominate.”
Evidence for Stellar Substructure in the Halo and Outer Disk of M31 (2002, background): “The geometrical alignment of the two satellites with the southern stream and the broadly similar metal abundances initially suggested that either or both of them could be responsible for the tidal feature (Ibata et al. 2001a).”