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Proper Motions of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging. V: Final Measurement for Fornax

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 Added by Slawomir Piatek
 Publication date 2006
  fields Physics
and research's language is English




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The measured proper motion of Fornax, expressed in the equatorial coordinate system, is $(mu_{alpha},mu_{delta})=(47.6pm 4.6,-36.0pm 4.1)$ mas century$^{-1}$. This proper motion is a weighted mean of four independent measurements for three distinct fields. Each measurement uses a quasi-stellar object as a reference point. Removing the contribution of the motion of the Sun and of the Local Standard of Rest to the measured proper motion produces a Galactic rest-frame proper motion of $(mu_{alpha}^{mbox{tiny{Grf}}}, mu_{delta}^{mbox{tiny{Grf}}}) = (24.4pm 4.6,-14.3pm 4.1)$ mas century$^{-1}$. The implied space velocity with respect to the Galactic center has a radial component of $V_{r}=-31.8 pm 1.7$ km s$^{-1}$ and a tangential component of $V_{t}=196 pm 29$ km s$^{-1}$. Integrating the motion of Fornax in a realistic potential for the Milky Way produces orbital elements. The perigalacticon and apogalacticon are 118 (66, 137) kpc and 152 (144, 242) kpc, respectively, where the values in the parentheses represent the 95% confidence intervals derived from Monte Carlo experiments. The eccentricity of the orbit is 0.13 (0.11, 0.38), and the orbital period is 3.2 (2.5, 4.6) Gyr. The orbit is retrograde and inclined by $101^{circ}$ ($94^{circ}$, $107^{circ}$) to the Galactic plane. Fornax could be a member of a proposed ``stream of galaxies and globular clusters, however the membership of another proposed galaxy in the stream, Sculptor, has been previously ruled out. Fornax is in the Kroupa-Theis-Boily plane that contains eleven of the Galactic satellite galaxies, but its orbit will take it out of that plane.



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This article presents and discusses a method for measuring the proper motions of the Galactic dwarf spheroidal galaxies using images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The method involves fitting an effective point spread function to the image of a star or quasi-stellar object to determine its centroid with an accuracy of about 0.005 pixel (0.25 milliarcseconds) -- an accuracy sufficient to measure the proper motion of a dwarf spheroidal galaxy using images separated by just a few years. The data consist of images, dithered to reduce the effects of undersampling, taken at multiple epochs with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph or the Wide Field Planetary Camera. The science fields are in the directions of the Carina, Fornax, Sculptor, and Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxies and each has at least one quasi-stellar object whose identity has been established by other studies. The rate of change with time of the centroids of the stars of the dwarf spheroidal with respect to the centroid of the quasi-stellar object is the proper motion. Four independent preliminary measurements of the proper motion of Fornax for three fields agree within their uncertainties. The weighted average of these measurements is mu_alpha = 49 +- 13 milliarcseconds/century and mu_delta = -59 +- 13 milliarcseconds/century. The Galactocentric velocity derived from the proper motion implies that Fornax is near perigalacticon, may not be bound to the Milky Way, and is not a member of any of the proposed streams of galaxies and globular clusters in the Galactic halo. If Fornax is bound, the Milky Way must have a mass of at least (1.6 +- 0.8) x 10^{12} solar masses.
104 - S. Piatek , C. Pryor , P. Bristow 2006
This article presents a measurement of the proper motion of the Sculptor dwarf spheroidal galaxy determined from images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope using the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph in the imaging mode.
92 - S. Piatek , C. Pryor , P. Bristow 2005
This article presents a measurement of the proper motion of the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy determined from images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in two distinct fields.
We present an F606W-F814W color-magnitude diagram for the Draco dwarf spheroidal galaxy based on Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 images. The luminosity function is well-sampled to 3 magnitudes below the turn-off. We see no evidence for multiple turnoffs and conclude that, at least over the field of the view of the WFPC2, star formation was primarily single-epoch. If the observed number of blue stragglers is due to extended star formation, then roughly 6% (upper limit) of the stars could be half as old as the bulk of the galaxy. The color difference between the red giant branch and the turnoff is consistent with an old population and is very similar to that observed in the old, metal-poor Galactic globular clusters M68 and M92. Despite its red horizontal branch, Draco appears to be older than M68 and M92 by 1.6 +/- 2.5 Gyrs, lending support to the argument that the ``second parameter which governs horizontal branch morphology must be something other than age. Dracos observed luminosity function is very similar to that of M68, and the derived initial mass function is consistent with that of the solar neighborhood.
We present the first entirely ground-based astrometric determination of the proper motion for the Fornax Local Group Dwarf Spheroidal satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, using CCD data acquired with the ESO 3.5 m NTT telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile. Our unweighted mean from five Quasar fields in the background of Fornax, used as fiducial reference points, leads to $mu_alpha cos delta=0.62 pm 0.16$ $masy$, and $mu_delta=-0.53 pm 0.15$ $masy$. A detailed comparison with all previous measurements of this quantity seems to imply that there is still no convincing convergence to a single value, perhaps indicating the existence of unnacounted systematic effects in (some of) these measurements. From all available proper motion and radial velocity measurements for Fornax, we compute Fornaxs orbital parameters and their uncertainty using a realistic Galactic potential and a Monte Carlo simulation. Properties of the derived orbits are then compared to main star formation episodes in the history of Fornax. All published proper motion values imply that Fornax has recently (200-300 Myr ago) approached perigalacticon at a distance of $sim$150 kpc. However, the derived period exhibits a large scatter, as does the apogalacticon. Our orbit, being the most energetic, implies a very large apogalactic distance of $sim 950$ kpc. If this were the case, then Fornax would be a representative of an hypervelocity MW satellite in late infall.
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