Bibcode
Martin, Nicolas F.; Ibata, Rodrigo A.; Starkenburg, Else; Yuan, Zhen; Malhan, Khyati; Bellazzini, Michele; Viswanathan, Akshara; Aguado, David; Arentsen, Anke; Bonifacio, Piercarlo; Carlberg, Ray; González Hernández, Jonay I.; Hill, Vanessa; Jablonka, Pascale; Kordopatis, Georges; Lardo, Carmela; McConnachie, Alan W.; Navarro, Julio; Sánchez-Janssen, Rubén; Sestito, Federico; Thomas, Guillaume F.; Venn, Kim A.; Vitali, Sara; Voggel, Karina T.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Advertised on:
11
2022
Citations
32
Refereed citations
26
Description
We use the photometric metallicities provided by the panoramic Pristine survey to study the veracity and derive the metallicities of the numerous stellar streams found by the application of the STREAMFINDER algorithm to the Gaia Early Data Release 3 data. All 26 streams present in Pristine show a clear metallicity distribution function, which provides an independent check of the reality of these structures, supporting the reliability of STREAMFINDER in finding streams and the power of Pristine to measure precise metallicities. We further present six candidate structures with coherent phase-space and metallicity signals that are very likely streams. The majority of studied streams are very metal-poor (14 structures with [Fe/H] < -2.0) and include three systems with [Fe/H] < -2.9 (C-11, C-19, and C-20). These streams could be the closest debris of low-luminosity dwarf galaxies or may have originated from globular clusters of significantly lower metallicity than any known current Milky Way globular cluster. Our study shows that the promise of the Gaia data for Galactic Archeology studies can be substantially strengthened by quality photometric metallicities, allowing us to peer back into the earliest epochs of the formation of our Galaxy and its stellar halo constituents.
Related projects
Galaxy Evolution in the Local Group
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