Tails from the Orphanage

TL;DR

This study identifies multiple metal-poor stellar streams in the SDSS footprint, revealing their properties, orientations, and potential origins, and suggests they are part of the Vast Polar Structure.

Contribution

It reports the detection and characterization of several new stellar streams, expanding understanding of the Milky Way's halo structure and its satellite system.

Findings

Detected 3 to 7 halo debris streams in SDSS data.

Streams are metal poor, ~21 kpc away, and over 300 pc across.

Most streams are nearly radial and part of the Vast Polar Structure.

Abstract

Examining a portion of the northern Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) footprint, we detect at least three and possibly seven halo debris streams. One of these (PS1-D) was recently detected in the Pan-STARRS1 $3\pi$ survey, and the remaining two are also evident as extensions of the SDSS detections. All of these streams are metal poor and are found at a distance of around $21 \pm 5$ kpc. The streams are between 65\arcdeg~ and 70\arcdeg~ in length, oriented almost north-south, and are nearly parallel and somewhat convergent with the neighboring Orphan stream. Surface densities ranging from 1.5 to 0.5 stars per square degree down to $g = 21.7$ correspond to surface brightnesses between 35 and 37 mag per square arcsecond. The streams each appear to be more than 300 pc across, suggesting either dwarf/ultrafaint galaxy progenitors or long-term heating of very ancient globular cluster streams. The orbits of all but one of these streams appear to be nearly radial, and the orbit normals suggest that all of the streams are part of the Vast Polar Structure, a relatively narrow plane that contains most of the known satellite galaxies, globular clusters, and stellar streams.