Surveying the Inner Halo of the Galaxy with 2MASS-Selected Horizontal Branch Candidates

Details Surveying the Inner Halo of the Galaxy with 2MASS-Selected Horizontal Branch Candidates Surveying the Inner Halo of the Galaxy with 2MASS-Selected Horizontal Branch Candidates

2003-09-29

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0309794v2

Astron.J. 127 (2004) 1555

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

11 pages, including figures. Accepted by AJ with minor revisions

Scientific paper

We use 2MASS photometry to select blue horizontal branch (BHB) candidates covering the sky |b|>15 deg. A 12.550 deg. We insert simulated star streams into the data and conclude that the high Galactic latitude BHB candidates are consistent with having no ~5 deg wide star stream with density greater than 0.33 objects deg^-2 at the 95% confidence level. The absence of structure suggests there have been no major accretion events in the inner halo in the last few Gyr. However, at low Galactic latitudes a two-point angular correlation analysis reveals structure on angular scales <1 deg. This structure is apparently associated with stars in the thick disk, and has a physical scale of 10-100 pc. Interestingly, such structures are expected by cosmological simulations that predict the majority of the thick disk may arise from accretion and disruption of satellite mergers.

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