Bibcode
Torrealba, G.; Belokurov, V.; Koposov, S. E.; Bechtol, K.; Drlica-Wagner, A.; Olsen, K. A. G.; Vivas, A. K.; Yanny, B.; Jethwa, P.; Walker, A. R.; Li, T. S.; Allam, S.; Conn, B. C.; Gallart, C.; Gruendl, R. A.; James, D. J.; Johnson, M. D.; Kuehn, K.; Kuropatkin, N.; Martin, N. F.; Martinez-Delgado, D.; Nidever, D. L.; Noël, N. E. D.; Simon, J. D.; Stringfellow, G. S.; Tucker, D. L.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 475, Issue 4, p.5085-5097
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4
2018
Citations
117
Refereed citations
106
Description
We report the discovery of two ultra-faint satellites in the vicinity of
the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) in data from the Magellanic Satellites
Survey (MagLiteS ). Situated 18 deg (˜20 kpc) from the LMC and
separated from each other by only 18 arcmin, Carina II and III form an
intriguing pair. By simultaneously modelling the spatial and the
colour-magnitude stellar distributions, we find that both Carina II and
Carina III are likely dwarf galaxies, although this is less clear for
Carina III. There are in fact several obvious differences between the
two satellites. While both are well described by an old and metal poor
population, Carina II is located at ˜36 kpc from the Sun, with
MV ˜ -4.5 and rh ˜ 90 pc, and it is
further confirmed by the discovery of 3 RR Lyrae at the right distance.
In contrast, Carina III is much more elongated, measured to be fainter
(MV ˜ -2.4), significantly more compact (rh
˜ 30 pc), and closer to the Sun, at ˜28 kpc, placing it only
8 kpc away from Car II. Together with several other systems detected by
the Dark Energy Camera, Carina II and III form a strongly anisotropic
cloud of satellites in the vicinity of the Magellanic Clouds.
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Galaxy formation and evolution is a fundamental Astrophysical problem. Its study requires “travelling back in time”, for which there are two complementary approaches. One is to analyse galaxy properties as a function of red-shift. Our team focuses on the other approach, called “Galactic Archaeology”. It is based on the determination of galaxy
Matteo
Monelli