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Register a new userCould Segue 1 be a destroyed star cluster? - a dynamical perspective
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Raul Dominguez
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We attempt to find a progenitor for the ultra-faint object Segue 1 under the assumption that it formed as a dark matter free star cluster in the past. We look for orbits, using the elongation of Segue 1 on the sky as a tracer of its path. Those orbits are followed backwards in time to find the starting points of our N-body simulations. The successful orbit, with which we can reproduce Segue 1 has a proper motion of mu_alpha = -0.19 mas/yr and mu_delta = -1.9 mas/yr, placing Segue 1 near its apo-galacticon today. Our best fitting model has an initial mass of 6224 Msun and an initial scale-length of 5.75 pc.
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We apply the optimal filter technique to Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometry around Segue 1 and find that the outer parts of the cluster are distorted. There is strong evidence for ~ 1 degree elongations of extra-tidal stars, extending both eastwards and southwestwards of the cluster. The extensions have similar differential Hess diagrams to Segue 1. A Kolmogorov-Smirnov test suggests a high probability that both come from the same parent distribution. The location of Segue 1 is close to crossings of the tidal wraps of the Sagittarius stream. By extracting blue horizontal branch stars from Sloans spectral database, two kinematic features are isolated and identified with different wraps of the Sagittarius stream. We show that Segue 1 is moving with a velocity that is close to one of the wraps. At this location, we estimate that there are enough Sagittarius stars, indistinguishable from Segue 1 stars, to inflate the velocity dispersion and hence the mass-to-light ratio. All the available evidence is consistent with the interpretation that Segue 1 is a star cluster, originally from the Sagittarius galaxy, and now dissolving in the Milky Way.
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