Sifting for a Stream: The Morphology of the $300S$ Stellar Stream

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the morphology of the $300S$ stellar stream using combined photometric, proper motion, and spectroscopic data to understand its structure and interactions within the Milky Way.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive model of the $300S$ stream's entire morphology, revealing features like density peaks, a gap, and a kink influenced by the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Findings

$300S$ has three density peaks and smooth width variations.

Detected a $ ext{~}4.7^ ext{o}$ gap and a kink in the stream.

Dynamical modeling suggests influence from the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Abstract

Stellar streams are sensitive laboratories for understanding the small-scale structure in our Galaxy's gravitational field. Here, we analyze the morphology of the $300S$ stellar stream, which has an eccentric, retrograde orbit and thus could be an especially powerful probe of both baryonic and dark substructures within the Milky Way. Due to extensive background contamination from the Sagittarius stream (Sgr), we perform an analysis combining Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey photometry, $\textit{Gaia}$ DR3 proper motions, and spectroscopy from the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey ($\textit{S}^5$). We redetermine the stream coordinate system and distance gradient, then apply two approaches to describe $300S$'s morphology. In the first, we analyze stars from $\textit{Gaia}$ using proper motions to remove Sgr. In the second, we generate a simultaneous model of $300S$ and Sgr based purely on photometric information. Both approaches agree within their respective domains and describe the stream over a region spanning $33^\circ$. Overall, $300S$ has three well-defined density peaks and smooth variations in stream width. Furthermore, $300S$ has a possible gap of $\sim 4.7^\circ$ and a kink. Dynamical modeling of the kink implies that $300S$ was dramatically influenced by the Large Magellanic Cloud. This is the first model of $300S$'s morphology across its entire known footprint, opening the door for deeper analysis to constrain the structures of the Milky Way.