Are Compact High Velocity Clouds the Missing Local Group Dwarf Satellites?

Details Are Compact High Velocity Clouds the Missing Local Group Dwarf Satellites? Are Compact High Velocity Clouds the Missing Local Group Dwarf Satellites?

Feb 2000

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000noao.prop..144g&link_type=abstract

NOAO Proposal ID #2000A-0144

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Scientific paper

Braun & Burton (1999) recently uncovered a large sample of isolated, compact high velocity clouds (CHVCs) with infall motion toward the Local Group barycenter. Follow-up observations with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) revealed that these CHVCs have distances of 0.5-1 Mpc and H I masses exceeding the total masses of of dSph galaxies. Some CHVCs are rotationally supported and dark matter dominated. Are CHVCs the missing Local Group satellites predicted by hierarchical clustering scenarios? Are they proto-galactic gas clouds or do they contain stars as well? If stars are present, when did they form and what are their properties? Are CHVCs dwarf irregular galaxies in formation, or Local Group counterparts of the extended, low- density dwarf spheroidals observed in the Virgo cluster? CHVCs may host the intracluster stars observed in other galaxy clusters and may contribute significantly to the baryonic and dark matter mass budget in the Universe. We propose a systematic, targeted search for stars in a subsample of CHVCs that showed a rotation signature in the WSRT images. We will use the Mosaic Imagers at NOAO with Washington filters and DDO51 to discriminate efficiently between foreground dwarfs and distant giants. A failure to detect stars would be a very interesting result in itself: the first discovery of pure H I/dark matter halos prior to any star formation; i.e., the most basic of galaxy building blocks! A detection of stars will help to refine the H I distances, augment the faint end of the galaxy luminosity function, and open the way to the study of the stellar populations of a new, very dark type of dwarf galaxy.

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