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Register a new userA Runaway Giant in the Galactic Halo
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New evidence provided by the Gaia satellite places the location of the runaway star J01020100-7122208 in the halo of the Milky Way (MW) rather than in the Small Magellanic Cloud as previously thought. We conduct a reanalysis of the stars physical and kinematic properties, which indicates that the star may be an even more extraordinary find than previously reported. The star is a 180 Myr old 3-4 Mo G5-8 bright giant, with an effective temperature of 4800+/-100 K, a metallicity of {Fe/H]=-0.5, and a luminosity of log L/Lo=2.70+/-0.20 dex. A comparison with evolutionary tracks identifies the star as being in a giant or early asymptotic giant branch stage. The proper motion, combined with the previously known radial velocity, yields a total Galactocentric space velocity of 296 km/s. The star is currently located 6.4 kpc below the plane of the Milky Way, but our analysis of its orbit shows it passed through the disk ~25 Myr ago. The stars metallicity and age argue against it being native to the halo, and we suggest that the star was likely ejected from the disk. We discuss several ejection mechanisms, and conclude that the most likely scenario is ejection by the Milky Ways central black hole based upon our analysis of the stars orbit. The identification of the large radial velocity of J01020100-7122208 came about as a happenstance of it being seen in projection with the SMC, and we suggest that many similar objects may be revealed in Gaia data.
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The vast majority of Milky Way stellar halo stars were likely accreted from a small number ($lesssim$3) of relatively large dwarf galaxy accretion events. However, the timing of these events is poorly constrained, relying predominantly on indirect dynamical mixing arguments or imprecise age measurements of stars associated with debris structures. Here, we aim to infer robust stellar ages for stars associated with galactic substructures to more directly constrain the merger history of the Galaxy. By combining kinematic, asteroseismic, and spectroscopic data where available, we infer stellar ages for a sample of 10 red giant stars that were kinematically selected to be associated with the stellar halo, a subset of which are associated with the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage halo substructure, and compare their ages to 3 red giant stars in the Galactic disk. Despite systematic differences in both absolute and relative ages determined by this work, age rankings of stars in this sample are robust. Passing the same observable inputs to multiple stellar age determination packages, we measure a weighted average age for the Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage stars in our sample of 8 $pm$ 3 (stat.) $pm$ 1 (sys.) Gyr. We also determine hierarchical ages for the populations of Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage, in situ halo and disk stars, finding a Gaia-Enceladus-Sausage population age of 8.0$^{+3.2}_{-2.3}$ Gyr. Although we cannot distinguish hierarchical population ages of halo or disk structures with our limited data and sample of stars, this framework should allow distinct characterization of Galactic substructures using larger stellar samples and additional data available in the near future.
We statistically quantify the amount of substructure in the Milky Way stellar halo using a sample of 4568 halo K giant stars at Galactocentric distances ranging over 5-125 kpc. These stars have been selected photometrically and confirmed spectroscopically as K giants from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys SEGUE project. Using a position-velocity clustering estimator (the 4distance) and a model of a smooth stellar halo, we quantify the amount of substructure in the halo, divided by distance and metallicity. Overall, we find that the halo as a whole is highly structured. We also confirm earlier work using BHB stars which showed that there is an increasing amount of substructure with increasing Galactocentric radius, and additionally find that the amount of substructure in the halo increases with increasing metallicity. Comparing to resampled BHB stars, we find that K giants and BHBs have similar amounts of substructure over equivalent ranges of Galactocentric radius. Using a friends-of-friends algorithm to identify members of individual groups, we find that a large fraction (~33%) of grouped stars are associated with Sgr, and identify stars belonging to other halo star streams: the Orphan Stream, the Cetus Polar Stream, and others, including previously unknown substructures. A large fraction of sample K giants (more than 50%) are not grouped into any substructure. We find also that the Sgr stream strongly dominates groups in the outer halo for all except the most metal-poor stars, and suggest that this is the source of the increase of substructure with Galactocentric radius and metallicity.
A small fraction of the halo field is made up of stars that share the light element (Z<=13) anomalies characteristic of second generation globular cluster (GC) stars. The ejected stars shed light on the formation of the Galactic halo by tracing the dynamical history of the clusters, which are believed to have once been more massive. Some of these ejected stars are expected to show strong Al enhancement at the expense of shortage of Mg, but until now no such star has been found. We search for outliers in the Mg and Al abundances of the few hundreds of halo field stars observed in the first eighteen months of the Gaia-ESO public spectroscopic survey. One halo star at the base of the red giant branch, here referred to as 22593757-4648029 is found to have [Mg/Fe]=-0.36+-0.04 and [Al/Fe]=0.99+-0.08, which is compatible with the most extreme ratios detected in GCs so far. We compare the orbit of 22593757-4648029 to GCs of similar metallicity and find it unlikely that this star has been tidally stripped with low ejection velocity from any of the clusters. However, both chemical and kinematic arguments render it plausible that the star has been ejected at high velocity from the anomalous GC omega Centauri within the last few billion years. We cannot rule out other progenitor GCs, because some may have disrupted fully, and the abundance and orbital data are inadequate for many of those that are still intact.
Several stars detected moving at velocities near to or exceeding the Galactic escape speed likely originated in the Milky Way disc. We quantitatively explore the `binary supernova scenario hypothesis, wherein these `hyper-runaway stars are ejected at large peculiar velocities when their close, massive binary companions undergo a core-collapse supernova and the binary is disrupted. We perform an extensive suite of binary population synthesis simulations evolving massive systems to determine the assumptions and parameters which most impact the ejection rate of fast stars. In a simulation tailored to eject fast stars, we find the most likely hyper-runaway star progenitor binary is composed of a massive ($sim$$30,mathrm{M_{odot}}$) primary and a $sim$$3-4,mathrm{M_{odot}}$ companion on an orbital period that shrinks to $lesssim$1 day prior to the core collapse following a common envelope phase. The black hole remnant formed from the primary must receive a natal kick $gtrsim$1000 $mathrm{km s^{-1}}$ to disrupt the binary and eject the companion at a large velocity. We compare the fast stars produced in these simulations to a contemporary census of early-type Milky Way hyper-runaway star candidates. We find that these rare objects may be produced in sufficient number only when poorly-constrained binary evolution parameters related to the strength of post-core collapse remnant natal kicks and common envelope efficiency are adjusted to values currently unsupported -- but not excluded -- by the literature. We discuss observational implications that may constrain the existence of these putative progenitor systems.
In this paper, we report the discovery of a new late-B type unbound hyper-runaway star (LAMOST-HVS4) from the LAMOST spectroscopic surveys. According to its atmospheric parameters, it is either a B-type main sequence (MS) star or a blue horizontal branch (BHB) star. Its Galactocentric distance and velocity are 30.3 +/- 1.6 kpc and 586 +/- 7 km/s if it is an MS star, and they are 13.2 +/- 3.7 kpc and 590 +/- 7 km/s if a BHB star. We track its trajectories back, and find that the trajectories intersect with the Galactic disk and the Galactic center lies outside of the intersection region at the 3 sigma confidence level. We investigate a number of mechanisms that could be responsible for the ejection of the star, and find that it is probably ejected from the Galactic disk by supernova explosion or multiple-body interactions in dense young stellar clusters.
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