The proper motion of Palomar 5

TL;DR

This paper measures the proper motion of Palomar 5 using a 15-year baseline with SDSS and LBT data, and models its disruption in the Milky Way to better understand its orbit and the galaxy's potential.

Contribution

First CCD-based proper motion measurement of Palomar 5 using SDSS and LBT data, enabling improved modeling of its orbit and disruption in the Milky Way.

Findings

Proper motion of Palomar 5: mu_alpha=-2.296 mas/yr, mu_delta=-2.257 mas/yr.

A spherical Milky Way model with V_0=220 km/s fits the stream data well.

Preferred Palomar 5 distance is around 24 kpc.

Abstract

Palomar 5 (Pal 5) is a faint halo globular cluster associated with narrow tidal tails. It is a useful system to understand the process of tidal dissolution, as well as to constrain the potential of the Milky Way. A well-determined orbit for Pal 5 would enable detailed study of these open questions. We present here the first CCD-based proper motion measurement of Pal 5 obtained using SDSS as a first epoch and new LBT/LBC images as a second, giving a baseline of 15 years. We perform relative astrometry, using SDSS as a distortion-free reference, and images of the cluster and also of the Pal 5 stream for the derivation of the distortion correction for LBC. The reference frame is made up of background galaxies. We correct for differential chromatic refraction using relations obtained from SDSS colors as well as from flux-calibrated spectra, finding that the correction relations for stars and for galaxies are different. We obtain mu_alpha=-2.296+/-0.186 mas/yr and mu_delta=-2.257+/-0.181 mas/yr for the proper motion of Pal 5. We use this motion, and the publicly available code galpy, to model the disruption of Pal 5 in different Milky Way models consisting of a bulge, a disk and a spherical dark matter halo. Our fits to the observed stream properties (streak and radial velocity gradient) result in a preference for a relatively large Pal 5 distance of around 24 kpc. A slightly larger absolute proper motion than what we measure also results in better matches but the best solutions need a change in distance. We find that a spherical Milky Way model, with V_0=220 km/s and V_(20 kpc), i.e., approximately at the apocenter of Pal 5, of 218 km/s, can match the data well, at least for our choice of disk and bulge parametrization.