No Arabic abstract
In this Letter, we announce the discovery of a new dwarf satellite of the Milky Way, located in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was found as a stellar overdensity in the North Galactic Cap using Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 (SDSS DR5). The satellites color-magnitude diagram shows a well-defined red giant branch, as well as a horizontal branch. As judged from the tip of the red giant branch, it lies at a distance of ~220 kpc. Based on the SDSS data, we estimate an absolute magnitude of Mv ~ -7.9, a central surface brightness of mu_0,V ~ 28 mag arcsecond^-2, and a half-light radius of ~ 8.5 (~ 550 pc at the measured distance). The outer regions of Canes Venatici appear extended and distorted. The discovery of such a faint galaxy in proximity to the Milky Way strongly suggests that more such objects remain to be found.
We have identified 23 RR Lyrae stars and 3 possible Anomalous Cepheids among 84 candidate variables in the recently discovered Canes Venatici I dwarf spheroidal galaxy. The mean period of 18 RRab type stars is <Pab> = 0.60 +/-0.01 days. This period, and the location of these stars in the period-amplitude diagram, suggest that Canes Venatici I is likely an Oosterhoff-intermediate system. The average apparent magnitude of the RR Lyrae stars <V> = 22.17 +/-0.02 is used to obtain a precision distance estimate of 210 +7/-5 kpc, for an adopted reddening E(B-V)=0.03 mag. We present a B,V color-magnitude diagram of Canes Venatici I that reaches V about 25 mag, and shows that the galaxy has a mainly old stellar population with a metal abundance near [Fe/H] = -2.0 dex. The width of the red giant branch and the location of the candidate Anomalous Cepheids on the color-magnitude diagram may indicate that the galaxy hosts a complex stellar population with stars from about 13 Gyr to as young as about 0.6 Gyr.
The aim of this work is to find a progenitor for Canes Venatici I (CVn I), under the assumption that it is a dark matter free object that is undergoing tidal disruption. With a simple point mass integrator, we searched for an orbit for this galaxy using its current position, position angle, and radial velocity in the sky as constraints. The orbit that gives the best results has the pair of proper motions $mu_alpha$ = -0.099 mas yr$^{-1}$ and $mu_delta$ = -0.147 mas yr$^{-1}$, that is an apogalactic distance of 242.79 kpc and a perigalactic distance of 20.01 kpc. Using a dark matter free progenitor that undergoes tidal disruption, the best-fitting model matches the final mass, surface brightness, effective radius, and velocity dispersion of CVn I simultaneously. This model has an initial Plummer mass of 2.47 x $10^7$ M$_odot$ and a Plummer radius of 653 pc, producing a remnant after 10 Gyr with a final mass of 2.45 x 10$^5$ M$_odot$, a central surface brightness of 26.9 mag arcsec$^{-2}$, an effective radius of 545.7 pc, and a velocity dispersion with the value 7.58 km s$^{-1}$. Furthermore, it is matching the position angle and ellipticity of the projected object in the sky.
We want to get insight into the nature, i.e. the formation mechanism and the evolution, of UGC 7639, a dwarf galaxy in the Canes Venatici I Cloud (CVnIC). We used archival GALEX (FUV and NUV) and SDSS images, as well as Hyperleda and NED databases, to constrain its global properties. GALEX FUV/NUV images show that UGC 7639 inner regions are composed mostly by young stellar populations. In addition, we used smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations with chemo-photometric implementation to account for its formation and evolution. UGC 7639 is an example of blue dwarf galaxy whose global properties are well matched by our multi-wavelength and multi-technique approach, that is also a suitable approach to highlight the evolution of these galaxies as a class. We found that the global properties of UGC 7639, namely its total absolute B-band magnitude, its whole spectral energy distribution (SED), and its morphology are well-matched by an encounter with a system four times more massive than our target. Moreover, the current star formation rate (SFR) of the simulated dwarf, ~0.03 M_sun yr-1, is in good agreement with our UV-based estimate. For UGC 7639, we estimated a galaxy age of 8.6 Gyr. Following our simulation, the ongoing star formation will extinguish within 1.6 Gyr, thus leaving a red dwarf galaxy.
In this Letter, we announce the discovery of a new satellite of the Milky Way in the constellation of Bootes at a distance of 60 kpc. It was found in a systematic search for stellar overdensities in the North Galactic Cap using Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 (SDSS DR5). The color-magnitude diagram shows a well-defined turn-off, red giant branch, and extended horizontal branch. Its absolute magnitude is -5.8, which makes it one of the faintest galaxies known. The half-light radius is 220 pc. The isodensity contours are elongated and have an irregular shape, suggesting that Boo may be a disrupted dwarf spheroidal galaxy.
We report the discovery of SDSSJ1049+5103, an overdensity of resolved blue stars at (alpha_{2000}, delta_{2000}) = (162.343, 51.051). This object appears to be an old, metal-poor stellar system at a distance of 45 +/- 10 kpc, with a half-light radius of 23$pm 10$ pc and an absolute magnitude of M_V = -3.0^{+2.0}_{-0.7}. One star that is likely associated with this companion has an SDSS spectrum confirming it as a blue horizontal branch star at 48 kpc. The color-magnitude diagram of SDSSJ1049+5103 contains few, if any, horizontal or red giant branch stars, similar to the anomalously faint globular cluster AM 4. The size and luminosity of SDSSJ1049+5103 places it at the intersection of the size-luminosity relationships followed by known globular clusters and by Milky Way dwarf spheroidals. If SDSSJ1049+5103 is a globular cluster, then its properties are consistent with the established trend that the largest radius Galactic globular clusters are all in the outer halo. However, the five known globular clusters with similarly faint absolute magnitudes all have half-mass radii that are smaller than SDSSJ1049+5103 by a factor of $gtrsim$ 5. If it is a dwarf spheroidal, then it is the faintest yet known by two orders of magnitude, and is the first example of the ultra-faint dwarfs predicted by some theories. The uncertain nature of this new system underscores the sometimes ambiguous distinction between globular clusters and dwarf spheroidals. A simple friends-of-friends search for similar blue, small scalesize star clusters detected all known globulars and dwarfs closer than 50 kpc in the SDSS area, but yielded no other candidates as robust as SDSSJ1049+5103.