The last breath of the Sagittarius dSph
Eugene Vasiliev, Vasily Belokurov

TL;DR
This study combines Gaia DR2 data and other surveys to analyze the 3D structure and kinematics of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy, revealing its prolate shape, mass, and imminent disruption due to tidal forces.
Contribution
It provides a detailed 3D kinematic and structural analysis of Sgr using Gaia data and N-body simulations, offering new insights into its shape, mass, and disruption process.
Findings
Sgr is a prolate structure with a 45-degree orientation.
Total mass is approximately 4 x 10^8 solar masses.
The galaxy is likely to be fully disrupted within the next Gyr.
Abstract
We use the astrometric and photometric data from Gaia Data Release 2 and line-of-sight velocities from various other surveys to study the 3d structure and kinematics of the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. The combination of photometric and astrometric data makes it possible to obtain a very clean separation of Sgr member stars from the Milky Way foreground; our final catalogue contains ~2.6e5 candidate members with magnitudes G<18, more than half of them being red clump stars. We construct and analyze maps of the mean proper motion and its dispersion over the region ~30x12 degrees, which show a number of interesting features. The intrinsic 3d density distribution (orientation, thickness) is strongly constrained by kinematics; we find that the remnant is a prolate structure with the major axis pointing at 45deg from the orbital velocity and extending up to ~5 kpc, where it transitions into the…
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