The QUEST RR Lyrae Survey: Confirmation of the Clump at 50 Kiloparsecs and Other Overdensities in the Outer Halo

By A. K. Vivas, R. Zinn, P. Andrews, C. Bailyn, C. Baltay, Paolo De Coppi, N. Ellman, T. Girard, D. Rabinowitz, B. E. Schaefer and 26 more. 2001

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We have measured the periods and light curves of 148 RR Lyrae variables from V = 13.5 to 19.7 from the first 100 deg2 of the Quasar Equatorial Survey Team RR Lyrae survey. Approximately 55% of these stars belong to the clump of stars detected earlier by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. According to our measurements, this feature has ~10 times the background density of halo stars, spans at least 37.°5 by 3.°5 in α and δ (≥30 by ≥3 kpc), lies ~50 kpc from the Sun, and has a depth along the line of sight of ~5 kpc (1 σ). These properties are consistent with the recent models that suggest that it is a tidal stream from the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. The mean period of the type ab variables, 0.58 days, is also consistent. In addition, we have found two smaller overdensities in the halo, one of which may be related to the globular cluster Pal 5.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

Building Up the Globular Cluster System of the Milky Way: The Contribution of the Sagittarius Galaxy (2002, background): “…evidence of the clumpy and “filamentary” nature of the Galactic halo have been provided by many different groups (e.g Newberg et al. 2002; Vivas et al. 2001; Dohm-Palmer et al. 2001; Yanny et al. 2000; Ivezic et al. 2000; Ibata et al. 2001a; Helmi et al. 1999; Helmi 2001; Majewski et…”
The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. I. Stellar Number Density Distribution (2005, background): “…with the data from modern large-scale sky surveys (e.g., the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, York et al. 2000; the Two Micron All Sky Survey, 2MASS, Majewski et al. 2003; and the QUESTsurvey, Vivas et al. 2001) evidence has been mounting for a more complex picture of the Galaxy and its formation.”
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).”
Testing LMC Microlensing Scenarios: The Discrimination Power of the SuperMACHO Microlensing Survey (2005, background): “Beside the Magellanic Stream, another full-fledged tidal stream, the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy, which currently is passing through the Galactic disk, has been detected (Ibata et al. 1995; Yanny et al. 2000; Ivezić et al. 2000; Vivas et al. 2001; Ibata et al. 2001).”
The QUEST RR Lyrae Survey. II. The Halo Overdensities in the First Catalog (2006, methodology): “For determining the distances of theQUESTRRLSs,we have adopted, as we have previously (e.g., Vivas et al. 2001),MV ¼ 0:55, which is consistent to 0.01 mag with the aboveMV -[Fe/H] relation and the mean halo metallicity measured by Suntzeff et al. (1991).”
The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) (2007, unknown): “…high latitude long fields were placed in fields known to be traversed by halo substructures, such as the Sagittarius stream (with field placement guided, e.g., by the results of Majewski et al. 2003) or the Virgo Overdensity (e.g., Vivas et al. 2001; Newberg et al. 2007; Jurić et al. 2008).”
SEGUE: A SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY OF 240,000 STARS WITH g = 14–20 (2009, background): “The five streams are Sagittarius (Yanny et al. 2000), Monoceros (Newberg et al. 2002), Orphan (Belokurov et al. 2007b), Virgo (Vivas et al. 2001; Juric et al. 2008) and GD-1 (Grillmair & Dionatos 2006).”
The stellar halo of the Galaxy (2008, methodology): “…substantial substructures have been uncovered, such as the Virgo overdensity (Juric et al. 2008), possibly linked to the Virgo Stellar Structure (Vivas et al. (2001); confirmed by Duffau et al. (2006) using radial velocities), the Triangulum-Andromeda (Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004) and the…”
The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. II. Stellar Metallicity (2008, background): “…recent discoveries of complex substructure in the distribution and kinematics of the Milky Way’s stars (e.g. Ivezić et al. 2000; Yanny et al. 2000; Vivas et al. 2001; Newberg et al. 2002; Gilmore, Wyse & Norris 2002; Majewski et al. 2003; Duffau, Zinn & Vivas 2006; Vivas & Zinn 2006; Grillmair…”
LIGHT CURVE TEMPLATES AND GALACTIC DISTRIBUTION OF RR LYRAE STARS FROM SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY STRIPE 82 (2009, methodology): “…and relatively clean samples of RR Lyrae stars can be selected using single-epoch colors (Ivezić et al. 2005), and if multi-epoch data exist, using variability (Ivezić et al. 2000; QUEST, Vivas et al. 2001; Sesar et al. 2007, De Lee 2008; SEKBO, Keller et al. 2008; LONEOS-I, Miceli et al. 2008).”
A Low-Latitude Halo Stream around the Milky Way (2003, background): “…of our Milky Way galaxy have been documented (Odenkirchen et al. 2001; Mateo, Olszewski & Morrison 1998; Majewski et al. 1999; Martinez-Delgado et al. 2001; Vivas et al. 2001; Rockosi et al. 2002; Kundu et al. 2002; Bellazzini, Ferraro, & Ibata 2002) in spatial star-density and kinematic studies.”
A Two Micron All Sky Survey View of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy. I. Morphology of the Sagittarius Core and Tidal Arms (2003, background): “The fractional contribution of Sgr stars (e.g., Ibata et al. 2001b; Vivas et al. 2001; Newberg et al. 2002) and clusters (e.g., Irwin 1999; Dinescu et al. 2000, 2001; Palma et al. 2002; Bellazzini et al. 2002a, 2003) to the Galactic halo, which must also satisfy limits imposed by the distribution…”
Star Counts Redivivus. IV. Density Laws through Photometric Parallaxes (2002, background): “…have been directly observed in giant stars (S. R. Majewski et al. 2002, in preparation), mainsequence stars (Majewski, Munn, & Hawley 1994, 1996; Newberg et al. 2002; Dinescu et al. 2002), and blue horizontal branch/RR Lyrae halo stars (Yanny et al. 2000; Ivezic et al. 2000; Vivas et al. 2001).”
Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos. II. Relating Substructure in Phase and Abundance Space to Accretion Histories (2008, background): “…see e.g. Helmi, White, de Zeeuw, & Zhao 1999) and more deeply (but typically only in small survey patches) using brighter, photometrically selected tracers (e.g. RR Lyraes and giant stars — Ivezić et al. 2000; Vivas et al. 2001; Morrison et al. 2000; Majewski, Ostheimer, Kunkel, & Patterson 2000).”
The New Galaxy: Signatures of Its Formation (2002, background): “The galactic halo has a power law density distribution ρ ∝ r−3.5 although this appears to depend on the stellar population (Vivas et al. 2001, Chiba & Beers 2000).”
The Ghost of Sagittarius and Lumps in the Halo of the Milky Way (2001, background): “Vivas et al. (2001) present corroborating evidence for this stream from observations of five clumped RR Lyrae stars at ¼ 197 , at a similar inferred distance from the Sun (20 kpc).”