The alignment of SDSS satellites with the VPOS: effects of the survey footprint shape

TL;DR

This study confirms the significance of the Vast Polar Structure (VPOS) of Milky Way satellites, demonstrating that SDSS satellite distribution enhances the structure's significance despite survey footprint biases, and finds the VPOS is more prominent than the Andromeda plane.

Contribution

It provides a robust statistical analysis showing the VPOS's significance and evaluates the impact of SDSS footprint shape on satellite alignment, confirming the structure's non-random nature.

Findings

SDSS satellites increase the significance of the VPOS.

Survey footprint biases against close alignment with classical satellites.

Less than 6 out of 27 MW satellites are consistent with isotropy.

Abstract

It is sometimes argued that the uneven sky coverage of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) biases the distribution of satellite galaxies discovered by it to align with the polar plane defined by the 11 brighter, classical Milky Way (MW) satellites. This might prevent the SDSS satellites from adding significance to the MW's Vast Polar Structure (VPOS). We investigate whether this argument is valid by comparing the observed situation with model satellite distributions confined to the exact SDSS footprint area. We find that the SDSS satellites indeed add to the significance of the VPOS and that the survey footprint rather biases away from a close alignment between the plane fitted to the SDSS satellites and the plane fitted to the 11 classical satellites. Finding the observed satellite phase-space alignments of both the classical and SDSS satellites is a ~5{\sigma} event with respect to an isotropic distribution. This constitutes a robust discovery of the VPOS and makes it more significant than the Great Plane of Andromeda (GPoA). Motivated by the GPoA, which consists of only about half of M31's satellites, we also estimate which fraction of the MW satellites is consistent with being part of an isotropic distribution. Depending on the underlying satellite plane width, only 2 to 6 out of the 27 considered MW satellites are expected to be drawn from isotropy, and an isotropic component of >50% of the MW satellite population is excluded at 95% confidence.