An Arc of Young Stars in the Halo of M82

Abstract

The properties of the brightest resolved stars in an arc that was originally identified by Sun et al. (2005) and is located in the extraplanar regions of M82 are discussed. The stars form an elongated structure that is traced over a projected area of 3.0 x 0.8 kpc. The integrated brightness is M_V ~ -11, while the total stellar mass is between 3 x 10^5 and 2 x 10^6 solar masses. If there is only foreground extinction then the youngest stars have a metallicity Z > 0.008 and an age log(tyears) ~ 7.75; thus, the youngest stars formed at roughly the same time as stars in tidal features that are associated with other M81 Group galaxies. If the arc is dispersing then it will deposit young, chemically enriched stars into the M82 halo.

arXiv comment11 pages including 3 postscript figures; accepted for publication in ApJ (Letters)

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Discovery of New Dwarf Galaxies in the M81 Group
• A Hyper Suprime-Cam View of the Interacting Galaxies of the M81 Group
• A high-resolution mosaic of the neutral hydrogen in the M81 triplet
• Shaken, Not Stirred: The Disrupted Disk of the Starburst Galaxy NGC 253
• The Identification of New Stellar Groupings in the M81 Debris Field
• And the Rest: The Stellar Archeological Record of M82 Outside the Central Starburst
• The Stellar Disk of M81
• Resolved Stellar Populations as Tracers of Outskirts
• Ghosts in the Attic: Mapping the Stellar Content of the S0 Galaxy NGC 5102
• Stars Born in the Wind: M82's Outflow and Halo Star Formation