Absolute Proper Motions and Chemical Abundances of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail

Details Absolute Proper Motions and Chemical Abundances of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail Absolute Proper Motions and Chemical Abundances of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail

Jan 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21531802c&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #318.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.319

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

We show results from our deep proper-motion survey of Kapteyn's Selected Areas (SAs; Casetti-Dinescu et al. 2006, AJ,132,2082), with a focus on fields that intersect the Sagittarius (Sgr) trailing tidal stream. Our data set, derived from matched, deep photographic plate pairs taken nearly 100 years apart, provides a unique window on the motions of stars in these SA fields. We find the signature of a common-motion population among our accurate proper motions of stars in five of these fields, as well as corresponding stellar excesses which are identified as stellar debris from the disrupted Sgr dwarf. Spectroscopic follow-up confirms that these stars are Sgr members, and the resultant radial velocities and spectroscopic parallaxes are combined with proper motions to derive full space motions of 30-100 tidal stream members per field. These kinematical data are compared to the predictions of the Law et al. (2009, ApJL,703,67) models of Sgr disruption, which have thus far reproduced most observed features of the Sgr stream, and have also constrained the triaxial shape of the Milky Way's dark matter halo. We also derive low-resolution spectroscopic abundances along this stretch of the Sgr stream, and explore the stream metallicity gradient reported by Chou et al. (2007, ApJ,670,346). Majewski et al. (2006, ApJL,627,25) showed that because the Sgr debris plane is nearly coincident with the Galactic X-Z Cartesian plane, proper motions in the portion of the Sgr trailing tail in our study almost entirely reflect the solar motion, and can be used to make a direct measurement of the rotation speed at the Solar circle (the "Local Standard of Rest") almost completely independent of the Sun's distance from the Galactic center. Here, we report our derived constraints on the solar motion from absolute proper motions of Sgr debris in our SA fields.

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