THE PHOENIX STREAM: A COLD STREAM IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • ABSTRACT We report the discovery of a stellar stream in the Dark Energy Survey Year 1 (Y1A1) data. The discovery was made through simple colormagnitude filters and visual inspection of the Y1A1 data. We refer to this new object as the Phoenix stream, after its resident constellation. After subtraction of the background stellar population we detect a clear signal of a simple stellar population. By fitting the ridge line of the stream in colormagnitude space, we find that a stellar population with age =11.50.5 Gyr and [Fe/H]<1.6, located 17.50.9 kpc from the Sun, gives an adequate description of the stream stellar population. The stream is detected over an extension of 8.1 (2.5 kpc) and has a width of 54 pc assuming a Gaussian profile, indicating that a globular cluster (GC) is a probable progenitor. There is no known GC within 5 kpc that is compatible with being the progenitor of the stream, assuming that the stream traces its orbit. We examined overdensities (ODs) along the stream, however, no obvious counterpart-bound stellar system is visible in the coadded images. We also find ODs along the stream that appear to be symmetrically distributedconsistent with the epicyclic OD scenario for the formation of cold streamsas well as a misalignment between the northern and southern part of stream. Despite the close proximity we find no evidence that this stream and the halo cluster NGC 1261 have a common accretion origin linked to the recently found EriPhe OD.

published proceedings

  • ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL

altmetric score

  • 60.276

author list (cited authors)

  • Balbinot, E., Yanny, B., Li, T. S., Santiago, B., Marshall, J. L., Finley, D. A., ... Walker, A. R.

citation count

  • 47

complete list of authors

  • Balbinot, E||Yanny, B||Li, TS||Santiago, B||Marshall, JL||Finley, DA||Pieres, A||Abbott, TMC||Abdalla, FB||Allam, S||Benoit-Levy, A||Bernstein, GM||Bertin, E||Brooks, D||Burke, DL||Rosell, A Carnero||Kind, M Carrasco||Carretero, J||Cunha, CE||Da Costa, LN||DePoy, DL||Desai, S||Diehl, HT||Doel, P||Estrada, J||Flaugher, B||Frieman, J||Gerdes, DW||Gruen, D||Gruendl, RA||Honscheid, K||James, DJ||Kuehn, K||Kuropatkin, N||Lahav, O||March, M||Martini, P||Miquel, R||Nichol, RC||Ogando, R||Romer, AK||Sanchez, E||Schubnell, M||Sevilla-Noarbe, I||Smith, RC||Soares-Santos, M||Sobreira, F||Suchyta, E||Tarle, G||Thomas, D||Tucker, D||Walker, AR

publication date

  • March 2016