Discovery of a thin stellar stream in the SLAMS survey

TL;DR

The paper reports the discovery of a new thin stellar stream called the Jet stream in the SLAMS survey data, characterized by its narrow width, old metal-poor stars, and a distance of about 29 kpc, with no clear progenitor.

Contribution

This work introduces the Jet stream, a newly identified stellar stream from the SLAMS survey, expanding knowledge of the Milky Way's stellar halo structures.

Findings

Jet stream is approximately 0.18 degrees wide and 10 degrees long.

The stream's stellar population is old and metal-poor, at about 29 kpc distance.

No obvious progenitor candidate was identified.

Abstract

We report the discovery of a thin stellar stream - which we name the Jet stream - crossing the constellations of Hydra and Pyxis. The discovery was made in data from the SLAMS survey, which comprises deep $g$ and $r$ imaging for a $650$ square degree region above the Galactic disc performed by the CTIO Blanco + DECam. SLAMS photometric catalogues will be made publicly available. The stream is approximately 0.18 degrees wide and 10 degrees long, though it is truncated by the survey footprint. Its colour-magnitude diagram is consistent with an old, metal-poor stellar population at a heliocentric distance of approximately 29 kpc. We corroborate this measurement by identifying a spatially coincident overdensity of likely blue horizontal branch stars at the same distance. There is no obvious candidate for a surviving stream progenitor.