A New Milky Way Dwarf Satellite in Canes Venatici
Abstract
In this Letter, we announce the discovery of a new dwarf satellite of the Milky Way, located in the constellation Canes Venatici. It was found as a stellar overdensity in the North Galactic Cap using Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 (SDSS DR5). The satellite's color-magnitude diagram shows a well-defined red giant branch, as well as a horizontal branch. As judged from the tip of the red giant branch, it lies at a distance of ~220 kpc. Based on the SDSS data, we estimate an absolute magnitude of Mv ~ -7.9, a central surface brightness of mu_0,V ~ 28 mag arcsecond^-2, and a half-light radius of \~ 8.5' (~ 550 pc at the measured distance). The outer regions of Canes Venatici appear extended and distorted. The discovery of such a faint galaxy in proximity to the Milky Way strongly suggests that more such objects remain to be found.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0604354,
title = {A New Milky Way Dwarf Satellite in Canes Venatici},
author = {D. B. Zucker and V. Belokurov and N. W. Evans and M. I. Wilkinson and M. J. Irwin and T. Sivarani and S. Hodgkin and D. M. Bramich and J. M. Irwin and G. Gilmore and B. Willman and S. Vidrih and M. Fellhauer and P. C. Hewett and T. C. Beers and E. F. Bell and E. K. Grebel and D. P. Schneider and H. J. Newberg and R. F. G. Wyse and C. M. Rockosi and B. Yanny and R. Lupton and J. A. Smith and J. C. Barentine and H. Brewington and J. Brinkmann and M. Harvanek and S. J. Kleinman and J. Krzesinski and D. Long and A. Nitta and S. A. Snedden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0604354},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures; submitted to ApJ Letters