Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars: A Diffuse Star Cloud or Tidal Debris around the Milky Way in Triangulum-Andromeda

By H. Rocha-Pinto, S. Majewski, M. Skrutskie, J. Crane, R. Patterson. 2004

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We report here the discovery of an apparent excess of 2MASS M giant candidates with dereddened 0.85 < J - Ks < 1.2 spanning a considerably large area of the celestial sphere between, at least, 100° < l < 150° and -20° > b > -40° and covering most of the constellations of Triangulum and Andromeda. This structure does not seem to be preferentially distributed around a clear core, but rather lies in a tenuous, clumpy cloudlike structure tens of kiloparsecs away. The reduced proper-motion diagram, as well as spectroscopy of a subsample, shows these excess stars to be real giants, not contaminating dwarfs. Radial velocity measurements indicate among those M giants the presence of a coherent kinematical structure with a velocity dispersion σ < 17 km s-1. Our findings support the existence of a quite dispersed stellar structure around the Milky Way that, because of its coreless and sparse distribution, could be part of a tidal stream or a new kind of satellite galaxy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dd6c0645d31d1cfa853166abe1a469a88d0edad0

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The Detection of a 45° Tidal Stream Associated with the Globular Cluster NGC 5466 (2006, background): “The advent of large-scale, digital sky surveys has enabled a remarkable increase in our ability to distinguish substructures in our Galaxy (Yanny et al. 2003; Majewski et al. 2003; – 2 – Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004; Johnston, Law, & Majewski 2005).”
A NEW FAINT MILKY WAY SATELLITE DISCOVERED IN THE PAN-STARRS1 3π SURVEY (2015, background): “It is also worth noting that the location of Lae 2/Tri II, (ℓ, b) = (141.4◦,−23.4◦), ∼ 20◦ East of M31, places it within the Triangulum-Andromeda stellar structure(s) (TriAnd; Majewski et al. 2004; Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004; Sheffield et al. 2014).”
Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos. II. Relating Substructure in Phase and Abundance Space to Accretion Histories (2008, background): “…orbit (the Monoceros ring, see Newberg et al. 2002; Ibata et al. 2003), while there are three examples of diffuse clouds (in the constellations of Virgo, Triangulum-Andromeda and HerculesAquila — see Jurić et al. 2008; Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004; Majewski et al. 2004; Belokurov et al. 2007).”
The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. I. Stellar Number Density Distribution (2005, background): “Rocha-Pinto et al. (2004) estimate the distance to TriAnd to be at least 10 kpc. Recently, additional tenuous structures were discovered in the same region of the sky (Majewski et al. 2004; Martin et al. 2007), pointing to the possibility that diffuse clouds such as Virgo and TriAnd are quite…”
THE SAGITTARIUS DWARF GALAXY: A MODEL FOR EVOLUTION IN A TRIAXIAL MILKY WAY HALO (2010, background): “Surveys have indicated the presence of such streams in both the Milky Way (e.g., Majewski et al. 1996; Helmi et al. 1999; Newberg et al. 2002; Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004; Belokurov et al. 2006; Duffau et al. 2006; Grillmair & Dionatos 2006; Starkenburg et al. 2009) and other nearby galaxies (e.g.,…”
A New Milky Way Dwarf Galaxy in Ursa Major (2005, background): “…(Willman et al. 2005a) and a faint M31 dwarf satellite (Zucker et al. 2004), as well as large-scale stellar structures and dwarf galaxy remnants around the Milky Way (Newberg et al. 2002; Yanny et al. 2003; Ibata et al. 2003; Rocha-Pinto et al. 2003, 2004; Majewski et al. 2003; Martin et al. 2004).”
STELLAR TIDAL STREAMS IN SPIRAL GALAXIES OF THE LOCAL VOLUME: A PILOT SURVEY WITH MODEST APERTURE TELESCOPES (2010, background): “…2007b, Grillmair 2006) and (ii) enormous clouds of debris that resemble our current understandings of the expansive Tri-And and Virgo overdensities and the Hercules-Aquila cloud in the Galactic halo (Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004, Belokurov et al. 2007a, Martinez-Delgado et al. 2007, Juric et al. 2008).”
The stellar halo of the Galaxy (2008, methodology): “…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 Hercules-Aquila clouds (Belokurov et al. 2007b).”
KINEMATICS OF THE STELLAR HALO AND THE MASS DISTRIBUTION OF THE MILKY WAY USING BLUE HORIZONTAL BRANCH STARS (2012, background): “…et al. 1994, 1995; Majewski et al. 2003; Belokurov et al. 2006), the Virgo over-density (Juríc et al. 2008), the Triangulum-Andromeda structure (Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004; Majewski et al. 2004; Martin et al. 2007) and the low-latitude Monoceros ring (Newberg et al. 2002) lend further support to…”
RINGS AND RADIAL WAVES IN THE DISK OF THE MILKY WAY (2015, background): “Sheffield et al. (2014) showed that the structure studied by Rocha-Pinto et al. (2004) actually corresponds to the socalled TriAnd2overdensity, identified by Martin et al. (2007) at a distance of ∼28 kpc. Sheffield et al. (2014) identify the more nearby “TriAnd1” at a distance of ∼15−21 kpc. Deason…”
Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars. XI. The Tidal Tails of the Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy and the Discovery of Magellanic Cloud Stars in the Carina Foreground (2006, background): “…see §6): the Monoceros/GASS stream (Newberg et al. 2002; Ibata et al. 2003; Rocha-Pinto et al. 2003; Crane et al. 2003), the TriAnd structure (Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004, Majewski et al. 2004), the M31 giant southern stream (Ibata et al. 2001) and a recently discovered, second M31 halo…”
Detection of a 63° Cold Stellar Stream in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2006, unknown): “In addition to the large-scale features attributed to past galaxy accretion events (Yanny et al. 2003; Majewski et al. 2003; Rocha-Pinto et al. 2004), SDSS data were used to detect the remarkably strong tidal tails of Palomar 5 (Odenkirchen et al. 2001; Rockosi et al. 2002; Odenkirchen et al. 2003).”
On the Accretion Origin of a Vast Extended Stellar Disk around the Andromeda Galaxy (2005, background): “…2003) is not the only stellar population with disk-like kinematics that lies beyond the rim of the Milky Way thin-disk: recently Majewski et al. (2004) and Rocha-Pinto et al. (2004) have uncovered a further stellar structure located at a distance of ∼ 40 kpc and which spans a huge angle on the sky.”