Bibcode
Hidalgo, S.; Velázquez, H.; Brown, A. G. A.; Valenzuela, O.; Aparicio, A.; Antiche, E.; Hernández-Pérez, F.; Aguilar, L.; Figueras, F.; Mateu, C.; Antoja, T.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 453, Issue 1, p.541-560
Advertised on:
10
2015
Citations
19
Refereed citations
17
Description
We present a method to identify ultrafaint dwarf galaxies (UFDGs)
candidates in the halo of the Milky Way using the future Gaia catalogue
and we explore its detection limits and completeness. The method is
based on the Wavelet Transform and searches for overdensities in the
combined space of sky coordinates and proper motions, using kinematics
in the search for the first time. We test the method with a Gaia mock
catalogue that has the Gaia Universe Model Snapshot as a background, and
use a library of around 30 000 UFDGs simulated as Plummer spheres with a
single stellar population. For the UFDGs, we use a wide range of
structural and orbital parameters that go beyond the range spanned by
real systems, where some UFDGs may remain undetected. We characterize
the detection limits as function of the number of observable stars by
Gaia in the UFDGs with respect to that of the background and their
apparent sizes in the sky and proper motion planes. We find that the
addition of proper motions in the search improves considerably the
detections compared to a photometric survey at the same magnitude limit.
Our experiments suggest that Gaia will be able to detect UFDGs that are
similar to some of the known UFDGs even if the limit of Gaia is around 2
mag brighter than that of SDSS, with the advantage of having a full-sky
catalogue. We also see that Gaia could even find some UFDGs that have
lower surface brightness than the SDSS limit.
Related projects
Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
The general aim of the project is to research the structure, evolutionary history and formation of galaxies through the study of their resolved stellar populations, both from photometry and spectroscopy. The group research concentrates in the most nearby objects, namely the Local Group galaxies including the Milky Way and M33 under the hypothesis
Martín
López Corredoira