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Register a new userHalo streams in the 7th SDSS data release
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R. Klement
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We have detected stellar halo streams in the solar neighborhood using data from the 7th public data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which includes the directed stellar program SEGUE: Sloan Extension For Galactic Understanding and Exploration. In order to derive distances to each star, we used the metallicity-dependent photometric parallax relation from Ivezic et al. (2008) for which we examine and quantify the accuracy. Our final sample consists of 22,321 nearby (d < 2 kpc), metal-poor ([Fe/H] < -0.5) main-sequence stars with 6D estimates of position and space velocity. We characterize the orbits of these stars through suitable kinematic proxies for their effective integrals of motion, angular momentum, eccentricity, and orbital polar angle and compare the observed distribution to expectations from a smooth distribution in four [Fe/H] bins. On this basis we identify at least five significant phase-space overdensities of stars on very similar orbits in the solar neighborhood to which we can assign unambiguously peaked [Fe/H] distributions. Three of them have been identified previously, including the halo stream discovered by Helmi et al. (1999) at a significance level of 12.0. In addition, we find at least two new genuine halo streams, judged by their kinematics and [Fe/H], at significance levels of 2.9 and 4.8, respectively. For one stream the stars even show coherence in configuration space, matching a spatial overdensity of stars found by Juric et al. (2008) at (R,z) approx (9.5,0.8) kpc. Our results demonstrate the practical power of our search method to detect substructure in the phase-space distribution of nearby stars without making a-priori assumptions about the detailed form of the gravitational potential.
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We use the SDSS-Gaia Catalogue to identify six new pieces of halo substructure. SDSS-Gaia is an astrometric catalogue that exploits SDSS data release 9 to provide first epoch photometry for objects in the Gaia source catalogue. We use a version of the catalogue containing $245,316$ stars with all phase space coordinates within a heliocentric distance of $sim 10$ kpc. We devise a method to assess the significance of halo substructures based on their clustering in velocity space. The two most substantial structures are multiple wraps of a stream which has undergone considerable phase mixing (S1, with 94 members) and a kinematically cold stream (S2, with 61 members). The member stars of S1 have a median position of ($X,Y,Z$) = ($8.12, -0.22, 2.75$) kpc and a median metallicity of [Fe/H] $= -1.78$. The stars of S2 have median coordinates ($X,Y,Z$) = ($8.66, 0.30, 0.77$) kpc and a median metallicity of [Fe/H] $= -1.91$. They lie in velocity space close to some of the stars in the stream reported by Helmi et al. (1999). By modelling, we estimate that both structures had progenitors with virial masses $approx 10^{10} M_odot$ and infall times $gtrsim 9$ Gyr ago. Using abundance matching, these correspond to stellar masses between $10^6$ and $10^7 M_odot$. These are somewhat larger than the masses inferred through the mass-metallicity relation by factors of 5 to 15. Additionally, we identify two further substructures (S3 and S4 with 55 and 40 members) and two clusters or moving groups (C1 and C2 with 24 and 12) members. In all 6 cases, clustering in kinematics is found to correspond to clustering in both configuration space and metallicity, adding credence to the reliability of our detections.
We identify a halo substructure in the Tycho Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) dataset, cross-matched with the RAVE-on data release. After quality cuts, the stars with large radial action ($J_R > 800$ kms$^{-1}$ kpc) are extracted. A subset of these stars is clustered in longitude and velocity and can be selected with further cuts. The 14 stars are centered on $(X,Y,Z) approx (9.0,-1.0,-0.6)$ kpc and form a coherently moving structure in the halo with median $(v_R,v_phi,v_z) = (167.33,0.86,-94.85)$ kms$^{-1}$. They are all metal-poor giants with median [Fe/H] $=-0.83$. To guard against the effects of distance errors, we compute spectrophotometric distances for the 8 out of 14 stars where this is possible. We find that 6 of the stars are still comoving. These 6 stars also have a much tighter [Fe/H] distribution $sim -0.7$ with one exception ([Fe/H] = -2.12). We conclude that the existence of the comoving cluster is stable against changes in distance estimation and conjecture that this is the dissolving remnant of a long-ago accreted globular cluster.
The phase-space structure of our Galaxy holds the key to understand and reconstruct its formation. The Lambda-CDM model predicts a richly structured phase-space distribution of dark matter and (halo) stars, consisting of streams of particles torn from their progenitors during the process of hierarchical merging. While such streams quickly loose their spatial coherence in the process of phase mixing, the individual stars keep their common origin imprinted into their kinematic and chemical properties, allowing the recovery of the Galaxys individual building blocks. The field of Galactic Archeology has witnessed a dramatic boost over the last decade, thanks to the increasing quality and size of available data sets. This is especially true for the solar neighborhood, a volume of 1-2 kpc around the sun, where large scale surveys like SDSS/SEGUE continue to reveal the full 6D phase-space information of thousands of halo stars. In this review, I summarize the discoveries of stellar halo streams made so far and give a theoretical overview over the search strategies imployed. This paper is intended as an introduction to researchers new to field, but also as a reference illustrating the achievements made so far. I conclude that disentangling the individual fragments from which the Milky Way was built requires more precise data that will ultimately be delivered by the Gaia mission.
We present a comprehensive study of the evolution of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) in the latest and final spectroscopic data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We test the scenario of passive evolution of LRGs in 0.15<z<0.5, by looking at the evolution of the number and luminosity density of LRGs, as well as of their clustering. A new weighting scheme is introduced that allows us to keep a large number of galaxies in our sample and put stringent constraints on the growth and merging allowed by the data as a function of galaxy luminosity. Introducing additional luminosity-dependent weighting for our clustering analysis allows us to additionally constrain the nature of the mergers. We find that, in the redshift range probed, the population of LRGs grows in luminosity by 1.5-6 % Gyr^-1 depending on their luminosity. This growth is predominantly happening in objects that reside in the lowest-mass haloes probed by this study, and cannot be explained by satellite accretion into massive LRGs, nor by LRG-LRG merging. We find that the evolution of the brightest objects (with a K+e-corrected M_r,0.1 < -22.8) is consistent with that expected from passive evolution.
We searched for and detected stellar streams or moving groups in the solar neighbourhood, using the data provided by the 1st RAVE public data release. This analysis is based on distances to RAVE stars estimated from a color-magnitude relation that was calibrated on Hipparcos stars. Our final sample consists of 7015 stars selected to be within 500 pc of the Sun and to have distance errors better than 25%. Together with radial velocities from RAVE and proper motions from various data bases, there are estimates for all 6 phase-space coordinates of the stars in the sample. We characterize the orbits of these stars through suitable proxies for their angular momentum and eccentricity, and compare the observed distribution to the expectations from a smooth distribution. On this basis we identify at least four phase space overdensities of stars on very similar orbits in the Solar neighbourhood. We estimate the statistical significance of these overdensities by Monte Carlo simulations. Three of them have been identified previously: the Sirius and Hercules moving group and a stream found independently in 2006 by Arifyanto and Fuchs and Helmi et al. In addition, we have found a new stream candidate on a quite radial orbit, suggesting an origin external to the Milky Ways disk. Also, there is evidence for the Arcturus stream and the Hyades-Pleiades moving group in the sample. This analysis, using only a minute fraction of the final RAVE data set, shows the power of this experiment to probe the phase-space substructure of stars around the Sun.
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