Searching the RCS2 and CFHTLS Surveys for the Faintest Milky Way Neighbors

Details Searching the RCS2 and CFHTLS Surveys for the Faintest Milky Way Neighbors Searching the RCS2 and CFHTLS Surveys for the Faintest Milky Way Neighbors

Jan 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21742401w&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #424.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The 14 dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way discovered in Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) data have emerged as the least luminous and most dark matter dominated galaxies in the known universe. SDSS searches for the faintest such objects (e.g. Segue 1, Bootes II, Willman 1, Segue II; L < 1000 LSun) are limited to less than 0.1% of the Milky Way virial volume. It is yet unknown whether they formed with such intrinsically low luminosities or whether tidal forces, due to their proximity to the Milky Way, are to blame for removing stars from these objects. The four extreme satellites found in SDSS may thus be the tip of a large iceberg of such faint systems, or they may indeed be rare objects. To take steps toward overcoming the biases present in our census of Milky Way dwarfs, we are conducting a systematic search of RCS2 and CFHTLS data for resolved Milky Way companions. We present the status of this search, along with the technical challenges of recovering a low-surface brightness stellar population from the sea of unresolved galaxies at faint magnitudes. We show candidates for Segue 1 analogs at 60 kpc < d < 120 kpc, twice as far as reachable with SDSS-depth data for such low luminosity objects. If confirmed, these will be the first ultra-faint Milky Way satellites discovered outside of SDSS data. If ruled out, their study will inform our ongoing and future searches of deep, wide-field data for Milky Way satellites.

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