The kinematic footprints of five stellar streams in Andromeda's halo

Details The kinematic footprints of five stellar streams in Andromeda's halo The kinematic footprints of five stellar streams in Andromeda's halo

2008-08-06

arxiv.org/abs/0808.0755v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

19 pages, 12 figures, accepted in MNRAS. High resolution version, with fig10 here: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~schapman/streams.

Scientific paper

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13703.x

(abridged) We present a spectroscopic analysis of five stellar streams (`A', `B', `Cr', `Cp' and `D') as well as the extended star cluster, EC4, which lies within streamC, all discovered in the halo of M31 from our CFHT/MegaCam survey. These spectroscopic results were initially serendipitous, making use of our existing observations from the DEep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph mounted on the Keck II telescope, and thereby emphasizing the ubiquity of tidal streams that account for ~70% of the M31 halo stars in the targeted fields. Subsequent spectroscopy was then procured in streamCr/p and streamD to trace the velocity gradient along the streams. For the cluster EC4, candidate member stars with average [Fe/H]~-1.4 (Fe/H_spec=-1.6), are found at v_{hel}=-285 km/s suggesting it could be related to streamCp. No similarly obvious cold kinematic candidate is found for streamD, although candidates are proposed in both of two spectroscopic pointings along the stream (both at -400 km/s). Spectroscopy near the edge of streamB suggests a likely kinematic detection, while a candidate kinematic detection of streamA is found (plausibly associated to M33 rather than M31). The low dispersion of the streams in kinematics, physical thickness, and metallicity makes it hard to reconcile with a scenario whereby these stream structures as an ensemble are related to the giant southern stream. We conclude that the M31 stellar halo is largely made up of multiple kinematically cold streams.

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