Fitting orbits to tidal streams

TL;DR

This paper introduces an algorithm to reconstruct missing phase-space coordinates of tidal streams using observed data, assuming a Galactic potential, and demonstrates its accuracy and ability to reject incorrect models with noise-free data.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel algorithm for fitting orbits to tidal streams that reconstructs missing phase-space data and tests its robustness against observational errors.

Findings

Algorithm achieves ~1% accuracy in distances and proper motions.

It can effectively reject incorrect Galactic potential models.

Performance remains robust with realistic observational noise.

Abstract

Recent years have seen the discovery of many tidal streams through the Galaxy. Relatively straightforward observations of a stream allow one to deduce three phase-space coordinates of an orbit. An algorithm is presented that reconstructs the missing phase-space coordinates from these data. The reconstruction starts from assumed values of the Galactic potential and a distance to one point on the orbit, but with noise-free data the condition that energy be conserved on the orbit enables one to reject incorrect assumptions. The performance of the algorithm is investigated when errors are added to the input data that are comparable to those in published data for the streams of Pal 5. It is found that the algorithm returns distances and proper motions that are accurate to of order one percent, and enables one to reject quite reasonable but incorrect trial potentials. In practical applications it will be important to minimize errors in the input data, and there is considerable scope for doing this.