Bibcode
DOI
Martínez-Delgado, David; Gómez-Flechoso, M. Ángeles; Aparicio, Antonio; Carrera, Ricardo
Referencia bibliográfica
The Astrophysical Journal, Volume 601, Issue 1, pp. 242-259.
Fecha de publicación:
1
2004
Revista
Número de citas
139
Número de citas referidas
121
Descripción
The main aim of this paper is to report two new detections of tidal
debris in the northern stream of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy located at
45° and 55° from the center of the galaxy. Our observational
approach is based on deep color-magnitude diagrams that provide accurate
distances, surface brightness, and the properties of stellar population
of the studied region of this tidal stream. The derived distances for
these tidal debris wraps are 45+/-5 and 62+/-6 kpc, respectively. These
detections are also strong observational evidence that the tidal stream
discovered by the Sloan Digitized Sky Survey is tidally stripped
material from the Sagittarius dwarf and support the idea that the tidal
stream completely enwraps the Milky Way in an almost polar orbit. We
also confirm these detections by running numerical simulations of the
Sagittarius dwarf plus the Milky Way. This model reproduces the present
position and velocity of the Sagittarius main body and presents a long
tidal stream formed by tidal interaction with the Milky Way potential.
The tidal streams of the model traces the last orbit of Sagittarius and
confirms our observational detections. This model is also in good
agreement with the available observations of the Sagittarius tidal
stream. The comparison of our model with the positions and distances of
two nonidentified halo overdensities discovered by the Sloan Digitized
Sky Survey and the QUEST survey shows that they are actually associated
with the trailing arm of the Sagittarius tidal stream. In addition, we
identify the proper-motion group discovered by Arnold & Gilmore as a
piece of the Sagittarius northern stream. We also present a method for
estimating the shape of the Milky Way halo potential using numerical
simulations. From our simulations we obtain an oblateness of the Milky
Way dark halo potential of 0.85, using the current database of distances
and radial velocities of the Sagittarius tidal stream. The
color-magnitude diagram of the apocenter of Sagittarius shows that this
region of the stream shares the complex star formation history observed
in the main body of the galaxy. We present the first evidence for a
gradient in the stellar population along the stream, possibly correlated
with its different pericenter passages.