A Runaway Giant in the Galactic Halo

TL;DR

Gaia data reveals a 180-million-year-old giant star in the Milky Way halo likely ejected from the disk by the central black hole, challenging previous assumptions about its origin.

Contribution

This study reanalyzes the star's properties and orbit, providing new evidence that it was ejected from the Galactic disk, possibly by the central black hole, rather than originating in the halo.

Findings

Star is a 180 Myr old giant in the Milky Way halo.

Star's orbit suggests ejection from the Galactic disk ~25 Myr ago.

Likely ejected by the Milky Way's central black hole.

Abstract

New evidence provided by the Gaia satellite places the location of the runaway star J01020100-7122208 in the halo of the Milky Way (MW) rather than in the Small Magellanic Cloud as previously thought. We conduct a reanalysis of the star's physical and kinematic properties, which indicates that the star may be an even more extraordinary find than previously reported. The star is a 180 Myr old 3-4 Mo G5-8 bright giant, with an effective temperature of 4800+/-100 K, a metallicity of {Fe/H]=-0.5, and a luminosity of log L/Lo=2.70+/-0.20 dex. A comparison with evolutionary tracks identifies the star as being in a giant or early asymptotic giant branch stage. The proper motion, combined with the previously known radial velocity, yields a total Galactocentric space velocity of 296 km/s. The star is currently located 6.4 kpc below the plane of the Milky Way, but our analysis of its orbit shows it passed through the disk ~25 Myr ago. The star's metallicity and age argue against it being native to the halo, and we suggest that the star was likely ejected from the disk. We discuss several ejection mechanisms, and conclude that the most likely scenario is ejection by the Milky Way's central black hole based upon our analysis of the star's orbit. The identification of the large radial velocity of J01020100-7122208 came about as a happenstance of it being seen in projection with the SMC, and we suggest that many similar objects may be revealed in Gaia data.