Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userThe Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy
66
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
Recent observational evidence suggests that the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy represents the only major ongoing accretion event in the Galactic halo, accounting for the majority of stellar debris identified there. This paper summarizes the recent discovery of another potential Milky Way accretion event, the Canis Major dwarf galaxy. This dwarf satellite galaxy is found to lie just below the Galactic plane and appears to be on an equatorial orbit. Unlike Sagittarius, which is contributing to the Galactic halo, the location and eventual demise of Canis Major suggests that it represents a building block of the thick disk.
rate research
Read More
As part of a radial velocity survey of low Galactic latitude structures that we undertook with the 2dF spectrograph on the AAT, we present the radial velocities of more than 1500 Red Giant Branch and Red Clump stars towards the centre of the Canis Major dwarf galaxy. With a mean velocity of 72pm7 km/s at a Heliocentric distance of 5.5 kpc and 114pm2 km/s at 8.5 kpc, these stars present a peculiar distance -- radial velocity relation that is unlike that expected from thin or thick disc stars. Moreover, they belong to a kinematically cold population with an intrinsic dispersion that may be as low as 11_{-1}^{+3} km/s. The radial velocity distribution is used to select Canis Major stars in the UCAC2.0 proper motion catalogue and derive proper motions in Galactic coordinates of (mu_l,mu_b)= (-3.6pm0.8 mas/yr, 1.5pm0.4 mas/yr) for the dwarf galaxy, which after correcting for the reflex solar motion along this line-of-sight gives (mu_l,mu_b)= (-6.8pm0.8 mas/yr, 0.8pm0.4 mas/yr)$, corresponding to a prograde orbit with a tangential velocity of sim235 km/s at the average distance of sim7.2 kpc. All these kinematic constraints can be reproduced in simulations of the accretion of a dwarf onto the Galactic disc. Such a process could also be responsible for the Monoceros Ring that has recently been shown to encompass the Galactic disc. However, without constraints on the kinematics of the tidal arms emerging from the Canis Major dwarf, it is not yet possible to definitively prove a link between the two structures.
We present an analysis of the asymmetries in the population of Galactic M-giant stars present in the 2MASS All Sky catalogue. Several large-scale asymmetries are detected, the most significant of which is a strong elliptical-shaped stellar over-density, close to the Galactic plane at (l=240, b=-8), in the constellation of Canis Major. A small grouping of globular clusters (NGC 1851, NGC 1904, NGC 2298, and NGC 2808), coincident in position and radial velocity, surround this structure, as do a number of open clusters. The population of M-giant stars in this over-density is similar in number to that in the core of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. We argue that this object is the likely dwarf galaxy progenitor of the ring-like structure that has recently been found at the edge of the Galactic disk. A numerical study of the tidal disruption of an accreted dwarf galaxy is presented. The simulated debris fits well the extant position, distance and velocity information on the ``Galactic Ring, as well as that of the M-giant over-densities, suggesting that all these structures are the consequence of a single accretion event. The disrupted dwarf galaxy stream orbits close to the Galactic Plane, with a pericentre at approximately the Solar circle, an orbital eccentricity similar to that of stars in the Galactic thick disk, as well as a vertical scale height similar to that of the thick disk. This finding strongly suggests that the Canis Major dwarf galaxy is a building block of the Galactic thick disk, that the thick disk is continually growing, even up to the present time, and that thick disk globular clusters were accreted onto the Milky Way from dwarf galaxies in co-planar orbits.
Overdensities in the distribution of low latitude, 2MASS giant stars are revealed by systematically peeling away from sky maps the bulk of the giant stars conforming to ``isotropic density laws generally accounting for known Milky Way components. This procedure, combined with a higher resolution treatment of the sky density of both giants and dust allows us to probe to lower Galactic latitudes than previous 2MASS giant star studies. While the results show the swath of excess giants previously associated with the Monoceros ring system in the second and third Galactic quadrants at distances of 6-20 kpc, we also find a several times larger overdensity of giants in the same distance range concentrated in the direction of the ancient constellation Argo. Isodensity contours of the large structure suggest that it is highly elongated and inclined by about 3 deg to the disk, although details of the structure -- including the actual location of highest density, overall extent, true shape -- and its origin, remain unknown because only a fraction of it lies outside highly dust-obscured, low latitude regions. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the 2MASS M giant overdensity previously claimed to represent the core of a dwarf galaxy in Canis Major (l ~ 240 deg) is an artifact of a dust extinction window opening to the overall density rise to the more significant Argo structure centered at larger longitude (l ~ 290 +- 10 deg, b ~ -4 +- 2 deg).
We study a very young star-forming region in the outer Galaxy that is the most concentrated source of outflows in the Spitzer Space Telescope GLIMPSE360 survey. This region, dubbed CMa-l224, is located in the Canis Major OB1 association. CMa-l224 is relatively faint in the mid-infrared, but it shines brightly at the far-infrared wavelengths as revealed by the Herschel Space Observatory data from the Hi-GAL survey. Using the 3.6 and 4.5 $mu$m data from the Spitzer/GLIMPSE360 survey, combined with the JHK$_s$ 2MASS and the 70-500 $mu$m Herschel/Hi-GAL data, we develop a young stellar object (YSO) selection criteria based on color-color cuts and fitting of the YSO candidates spectral energy distributions with YSO 2D radiative transfer models. We identify 293 YSO candidates and estimate physical parameters for 210 sources well-fit with YSO models. We select an additional 47 sources with GLIMPSE360-only photometry as `possible YSO candidates. The vast majority of these sources are associated with high H$_2$ column density regions and are good targets for follow-up studies. The distribution of YSO candidates at different evolutionary stages with respect to Herschel filaments supports the idea that stars are formed in the filaments and become more dispersed with time. Both the supernova-induced and spontaneous star formation scenarios are plausible in the environmental context of CMa-l224. However, our results indicate that a spontaneous gravitational collapse of filaments is a more likely scenario. The methods developed for CMa-l224 can be used for larger regions in the Galactic plane where the same set of photometry is available.
While searches for young stellar objects (YSOs) with the Spitzer Space Telescope focused on known molecular clouds, photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) can be used to extend the search to the entire sky. As a precursor to more expansive searches, we present results for a 100 square degree region centered on the Canis Major clouds.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
