Bibcode
Chou, Mei-Yin; Majewski, Steven R.; Cunha, Katia; Smith, Verne V.; Patterson, Richard J.; Martínez-Delgado, D.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 731, Issue 2, article id. L30 (2011).
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4
2011
Citations
21
Refereed citations
20
Description
We undertake the first high-resolution spectroscopic study of the
Triangulum-Andromeda (TriAnd) star cloud—an extended, mid-latitude
Milky Way (MW) halo substructure about 20 kpc away in the second
Galactic quadrant— through six M giant star candidates selected to
be both spatially and dynamically associated with this system. The
abundance patterns of [Ti/Fe], [Y/Fe], and [La/Fe] as a function of
[Fe/H] for these stars support TriAnd as having an origin in a dwarf
galaxy with a chemical enrichment history somewhat similar to that of
the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. We also investigate the
previously proposed hypothesis that TriAnd is an outlying, dynamically
older piece of the Monoceros Stream (also known as the Galactic
Anticenter Stellar Structure, "GASS") under the assumption that both
features come from the tidal disruption of the same accreted MW
satellite and find that net differences in the above abundance patterns
between the TriAnd and GASS stars studied suggest that these two systems
are independent and unrelated.