Schedule Feb 17, 2012
A New Milky Way Stellar Stream in the Direction of Andromeda
Ana Bonaca (Yale), Marla Geha (Yale)

The 8th data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey includes ~2000 deg^2 of new imaging, presenting a new opportunity to search for cold stellar streams in the Milky Way halo. Extending the matched filtering techniques developed for previous such searches to the southern Galactic hemisphere, we create stellar density maps probing the halo volume at distances from ~10 to ~30 kpc. On these maps we detect a narrow stream spanning ~15 deg in the direction of M33. A statistically background subtracted color magnitude diagram of the stream region indicates an old (~12 Gyr) and metal poor ([Fe/H]~-0.75) stellar population at ~28 kpc. Next generation kinematic studies of this and similar cold streams will provide tight constraints on the shape of the Galactic gravitational potential.


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