Kinematics and Chemistry of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail and Constraints on the Milky Way Mass Distribution

Details Kinematics and Chemistry of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail and Constraints on the Milky Way Mass Distribution Kinematics and Chemistry of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail and Constraints on the Milky Way Mass Distribution

2011-10-31

arxiv.org/abs/1111.0014v2

Astrophysical Journal, 744 (2012), 25

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Galaxy Astrophysics

26 pages, 24 figures (some with degraded resolution), accepted to ApJ; full-resolution version available at http://www.rpi.e

Scientific paper

10.1088/0004-637X/744/1/25

We present three-dimensional kinematics of Sagittarius (Sgr) trailing tidal debris in six fields located 70-130 degrees along the stream from the Sgr dwarf galaxy core. The data are from our proper-motion (PM) survey of Kapteyn's Selected Areas, in which we have measured accurate PMs to faint magnitudes in 40x40 arcmin fields evenly spaced across the sky. The radial velocity (RV) signature of Sgr has been identified among our follow-up spectroscopic data in four of the six fields and combined with mean PMs of spectroscopically-confirmed members to derive space motions of Sgr debris based on 15-64 confirmed stream members per field. These kinematics are compared to predictions of the Law & Majewski (2010) model of Sgr disruption; we find reasonable agreement with model predictions in RVs and PMs along Galactic latitude. However, an upward adjustment of the Local Standard of Rest velocity Theta_LSR from its standard 220 km/s to at least $232\pm14$ km/s (and possibly as high as $264\pm23$ km/s) is necessary to bring 3-D model debris kinematics and our measurements into agreement. Satisfactory model fits that simultaneously reproduce known position, distance, and radial velocity trends of the Sgr tidal streams, while significantly increasing Theta_LSR}, could only be achieved by increasing the Galactic bulge and disk mass while leaving the dark matter halo fixed to the best-fit values from Law & Majewski (2010). We derive low-resolution spectroscopic abundances along this stretch of the Sgr stream and find a constant [Fe/H] = -1.15 (with ~0.5 dex scatter in each field -- typical for dwarf galaxy populations) among the four fields with reliable measurements. A constant metallicity suggests that debris along the ~60-degree span of this study was all stripped from Sgr on the same orbital passage.

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