A Halo Substructure in Gaia Data Release 1

G. C. Myeong, N. W. Evans, V. Belokurov, S. Koposov, J. L. Sanders

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We identify a halo substructure in the Tycho Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) data set, cross-matched with the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE-on) data release. After quality cuts, the stars with large radial action (JR > 800 km s−1 kpc) are extracted. A subset of these stars is clustered in longitude and velocity and can be selected with further cuts. The 14 stars are centred on (X, Y, Z) ≈ (9.0, −1.0, −0.6) kpc and form a coherently moving structure in the halo with median (vR, vϕ, vz) = (167.33, 0.86, −94.85) km s−1. They are all metal-poor giants with median [Fe/H] = −0.83. To guard against the effects of distance errors, we compute spectrophotometric distances for 8 out of the 14 stars where this is possible. We find that six of the stars are still comoving. These six stars also have a much tighter [Fe/H] distribution ∼−0.7 with one exception ([Fe/H] = −2.12). We conclude that the existence of the comoving cluster is stable against changes in distance estimation and conjecture that this is the dissolving remnant of a globular cluster accreted long ago.
Original languageEnglish
JournalMonthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, Volume
Early online date10 Apr 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2017

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • astro-ph.GA
  • astro-ph.CO

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