We report on the discovery in the Gaia DR3 astrometric and spectroscopic catalog of a new polar stream that is found as an over-density in action space. This structure is unique as it has an extremely large apocenter distance, reaching beyond 100 kpc, and yet is detected as a coherent moving structure in the Solar neighborhood with a width of ∼4 kpc. A sub-sample of these stars that was fortuitously observed by LAMOST has a mean spectroscopic metallicity of ⟨[Fe/H]⟩=−1.60−0.16+0.15 dex and possesses a resolved metallicity dispersion of σ([Fe/H])=0.32−0.06+0.17 dex. The physical width of the stream, the metallicity dispersion and the vertical action spread indicate that the progenitor was a dwarf galaxy. The existence of such a coherent and highly radial structure at their pericenters in the vicinity of the Sun suggests that many other dwarf galaxy fragments may be lurking in the outer halo.
@article{arxiv.2206.10405,
title = {Typhon: a polar stream from the outer halo raining through the Solar neighborhood},
author = {Wassim Tenachi and Pierre-Antoine Oria and Rodrigo Ibata and Benoit Famaey and Zhen Yuan and Anke Arentsen and Nicolas Martin and Akshara Viswanathan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.10405},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication at ApJ. (Table typo corrected)