Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-05-21
Astrophys.J. 615 (2004) 732-737
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
14 pages, 4 figures, 1 table
Scientific paper
10.1086/424585
We report here the discovery of an apparent excess of 2MASS M giant candidates with dereddened 0.85 < J-K_S < 1.2 spanning a considerably large area of the celestial sphere between, at least, $100\degr < l < 150\degr$ and $-20\degr > b > -40\degr$, and covering most of the constellations of Triangulum and Andromeda. This structure does not seem to be preferentially distributed around a clear core, but rather lies in a tenuous, clumpy cloud-like structure tens of kiloparsecs away. The reduced proper-motion diagram as well as spectroscopy of a subsample shows these excess stars to be real giants, not contaminating dwarfs. Radial velocity measurements indicate among those M giants the presence of a coherent kinematical structure with a velocity dispersion $\sigma < 17$ km s$^{-1}$. Our findings support the existence of a quite dispersed stellar structure around the Milky Way that, due to its coreless and sparse distribution, could be part of a tidal stream or a new kind of satellite galaxy.
Crane Jeffrey D.
Majewski Steven R.
Patterson Richard J.
Rocha-Pinto Helio J.
Skrutskie Michael F.
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