English

A New Milky Way Dwarf Galaxy in Ursa Major

Astrophysics 2012-08-27 v2

Abstract

In this Letter, we report the discovery of a new dwarf satellite to the Milky Way, located at (α2000,δ2000\alpha_{2000}, \delta_{2000}) == (158.72,51.92) in the constellation of Ursa Major. This object was detected as an overdensity of red, resolved stars in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data. The color-magnitude diagram of the Ursa Major dwarf looks remarkably similar to that of Sextans, the lowest surface brightness Milky Way companion known, but with approximately an order of magnitude fewer stars. Deeper follow-up imaging confirms this object has an old and metal-poor stellar population and is \sim 100 kpc away. We roughly estimate MV=_V = -6.75 and r1/2=r_{1/2} = 250 pc for this dwarf. Its luminosity is several times fainter than the faintest known Milky Way dwarf. However, its physical size is typical for dSphs. Even though its absolute magnitude and size are presently quite uncertain, Ursa Major is likely the lowest luminosity and lowest surface brightness galaxy yet known.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0503552,
  title  = {A New Milky Way Dwarf Galaxy in Ursa Major},
  author = {Beth Willman and Julianne J. Dalcanton and David Martinez-Delgado and Andrew A. West and Michael R. Blanton and David W. Hogg and J. C. Barentine and Howard J. Brewington and Michael Harvanek and S. J. Kleinman and Jurek Krzesinski and Dan Long and Eric H. Neilsen, and Atsuko Nitta and Stephanie A. Snedden},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0503552},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

Replaced with ApJL accepted version. Includes some additional details, corrected references, and minor changes to Figure 4