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We utilize the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR10 to investigate the previously undetected faint extension of the Palomar 5 stellar stream. By applying the HDBSCAN clustering algorithm, we identify stream members and successfully extend the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-04-15 Yun-Ao Xiao , Hu Zou , Lu Feng , Wei-Jian Guo , Niu Li , Wen-Xiong Li , Shu-Fei Liu , Gaurav Singh , Ji-Peng Sui , Jia-Li Wang , Sui-Jian Xue

We develop a method for constraining the potential of the Milky Way using stellar streams with a known progenitor. The method expresses the stream in angle-action coordinates and integrates the orbits of the stars backwards in time to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-11-10 C. G. Palau , W. Wang , J. Han

Within the hierarchical framework for galaxy formation, merging and tidal interactions are expected to shape large galaxies to this day. While major mergers are quite rare at present, minor mergers and satellite disruptions - which result…

Stellar streams are sensitive tracers of the gravitational potential, which is typically assumed to be static in the inner Galaxy. However, massive mergers like Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus can impart torques on the stellar disk of the Milky Way…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-12-18 Jacob Nibauer , Ana Bonaca , Mariangela Lisanti , Denis Erkal , Zoe Hastings

Stellar streams -- formed from tidally stripped globular clusters or dwarf galaxies -- are sensitive tracers of a galaxy's accretion history and gravitational potential. While numerous streams are known in the Milky Way (MW), the formation…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-05-22 Sachi Weerasooriya , Tjitske Starkenburg , Emily C. Cunningham , Kathryn V Johnston

Tidal stellar shells and streams are two of the most intriguing low-surface-brightness features within galaxies, consisting of stars accreted from satellite galaxies. A crucial ingredient in determining which type of feature will be formed…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-04-17 Johannes Stoiber , Lucas M. Valenzuela , Rhea-Silvia Remus , Klaus Dolag

Nearly a hundred progenitor-less, thin stellar streams have been discovered in the Milky Way, thanks to Gaia and related surveys. Most streams are believed to have formed from star clusters and it was recently proposed that extended star…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-02-24 Daniel Roberts , Mark Gieles , Denis Erkal , Jason L. Sanders

Using deep photometric data from CFHT/Megacam, we study the morphology and density of the GD-1 stream, one of the longest and coldest stellar streams in the Milky Way. Our deep data recovers the lower main sequence of the stream with…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-03-28 T. J. L. de Boer , V. Belokurov , S. E. Koposov , L. Ferrarese , D. Erkal , P. Cote , J. F. Navarro

Tidal streams are a powerful probe of the Milky Way (MW) potential shape. In this paper, we introduce a simple test particle method to fit stream data, using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique to marginalise over uncertainties in the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-16 H. Lux , J. I. Read , G. Lake , K. V. Johnston

We present a new method for determining the Galactic gravitational potential based on forward modeling of tidal stellar streams. We use this method to test the performance of smooth and static analytic potentials in representing realistic…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-22 Ana Bonaca , Marla Geha , Andreas H. W. Kuepper , Juerg Diemand , Kathryn V. Johnston , David W. Hogg

We present a data-driven method for reconstructing the galactic acceleration field from phase-space measurements of stellar streams. Our approach is based on a flexible and differentiable fit to the stream in phase-space, enabling a direct…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2023-03-31 Jacob Nibauer , Vasily Belokurov , Miles Cranmer , Jeremy Goodman , Shirley Ho

The GD-1 star stream is currently the best available for identifying density fluctuations, "gaps", along its length as a test of the LCDM prediction of large numbers of dark matter sub-halos orbiting in the halo. Density variations of some…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-03-23 Raymond G. Carlberg

Stellar tidal streams are a key tracer of galaxy evolution and have the potential to provide an indirect means for tracing dark matter. For the Local Group, many diffuse substructures have been identified and their link to galaxy evolution…

We present a model for the interaction of the GD-1 stellar stream with a massive perturber that naturally explains many of the observed stream features, including a gap and an off-stream spur of stars. The model involves an impulse by a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-07-31 Ana Bonaca , David W. Hogg , Adrian M. Price-Whelan , Charlie Conroy

Using the example of the tidal stream of the Milky Way globular cluster Palomar 5 (Pal 5), we demonstrate how observational data on streams can be efficiently reduced in dimensionality and modeled in a Bayesian framework. Our approach…

Simulations are run with and without a normal cold dark matter sub-halo population below 4x10^8 M_sun to examine the role of the lower mass sub-halos in the creation of density variations, "gaps", within thin tidal star streams. Dense star…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-01-20 Raymond G. Carlberg

In hierarchical models of galaxy formation, stellar tidal streams are expected around most, if not all, galaxies. Although these features may provide useful diagnostics of the $\Lambda$CDM model, their observational properties remain poorly…

Nearby stellar streams carry unique information on the dynamical evolution and disruption of stellar systems in the Galaxy, the mass distribution in the disk, and provide unique targets for planet formation and evolution studies. We revisit…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-07-08 S. Ratzenböck , S. Meingast , J. Alves , T. Möller , I. Bomze

GD-1 is a long, thin, Milky Way star stream that has readily visible density variations along its length. We quantify the locations, sizes and statistical significance of the density structure, i.e. gaps, using a set of scaled filters. The…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-15 Raymond G. Carlberg , Carl J. Grillmair

Only in the Milky Way is it possible to conduct an experiment which uses stellar streams to detect low-mass dark matter subhaloes. In smooth and static host potentials, tidal tails of disrupting satellites appear highly symmetric. However,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-06-28 Denis Erkal , Sergey E. Koposov , Vasily Belokurov