$S^5$: New insights from deep spectroscopic observations of the tidal tails of the globular clusters NGC 1261 and NGC 1904

TL;DR

This study uses deep spectroscopic observations and Gaia data to analyze the tidal tails of globular clusters NGC 1261 and NGC 1904, revealing complex structures and providing insights into their dynamical states and formation history.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian mixture modeling approach combined with N-body simulations and photometry to identify and analyze extra-tidal features in these clusters, advancing understanding of their tidal interactions.

Findings

Detection of extra-tidal features consistent with previous studies.

Identification of tidal debris near Lagrange points in NGC 1904.

Potential members follow a simple stellar population in the CMD.

Abstract

As globular clusters (GCs) orbit the Milky Way, their stars are tidally stripped forming tidal tails that follow the orbit of the clusters around the Galaxy. The morphology of these tails is complex and shows correlations with the phase of the orbit and the orbital angular velocity, especially for GCs on eccentric orbits. Here, we focus on two GCs, NGC 1261 and NGC 1904, that have potentially been accreted alongside Gaia-Enceladus and that have shown signatures of having, in addition of tidal tails, structures formed by distributions of extra-tidal stars that are misaligned with the general direction of the clusters' respective orbits. To provide an explanation for the formation of these structures, we make use of spectroscopic measurements from the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey ($S^5$) as well as proper motion measurements from Gaia's third data release (DR3), and apply a Bayesian mixture modeling approach to isolate high-probability member stars. We recover extra-tidal features similar to those found in Shipp et al. (2018) surrounding each cluster. We conduct N-body simulations and compare the expected distribution and variation in the dynamical parameters along the orbit with those of our potential member sample. Furthermore, we use Dark Energy Camera (DECam) photometry to inspect the distribution of the member stars in the color-magnitude diagram (CMD). We find that the potential members agree reasonably with the N-body simulations and that the majority of them follow a simple stellar population-like distribution in the CMD which is characteristic of GCs. In the case of NGC 1904, we clearly detect the tidal debris escaping the inner and outer Lagrange points which are expected to be prominent when at or close to the apocenter of its orbit. Our analysis allows for further exploration of other GCs in the Milky Way that exhibit similar extra-tidal features.