In Pursuit of the Least Luminous Galaxies

Abstract

The dwarf galaxy companions to the Milky Way are unique cosmological laboratories. With luminosities as low as 10^-7 L_MW, they inhabit the lowest mass dark matter halos known to host stars and are presently the most direct tracers of the distribution, mass spectrum, and clustering scale of dark matter. Their resolved stellar populations also facilitate detailed studies of their history and mass content. To fully exploit this potential requires a well-defined census of virtually invisible galaxies to the faintest possible limits and to the largest possible distances. I review the past and present impacts of survey astronomy on the census of Milky Way dwarf galaxy companions, and discuss the future of finding ultra-faint dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way and beyond in wide-field survey data.

Review article, 20 pages. Accepted to Advances in Astronomy, Dwarf Galaxy Cosmology issue

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Cited by in corpus (49)

• Small-Scale Challenges to the $\Lambda$CDM Paradigm
• Cosmological Simulations with Self-Interacting Dark Matter I: Constant Density Cores and Substructure
• The Faintest Dwarf Galaxies
• Near-Field Cosmology with Metal-Poor Stars
• Eight Ultra-faint Galaxy Candidates Discovered in Year Two of the Dark Energy Survey
• Dark Matter Constraints from Observations of 25 Milky Way Satellite Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
• Galactic Searches for Dark Matter
• Dark matter substructure and dwarf galactic satellites
• Using the Milky Way satellites to study interactions between cold dark matter and radiation
• Kinematics and chemistry of recently discovered Reticulum 2 and Horologium 1 dwarf galaxies
• The Lazy Giants: APOGEE Abundances Reveal Low Star Formation Efficiencies in the Magellanic Clouds
• Galactic cirri in deep optical imaging
• At the survey limits: discovery of the Aquarius 2 dwarf galaxy in the VST ATLAS and the SDSS data
• Discovery of $\sim$ 9,000 new RR Lyrae in the Southern Catalina Surveys
• Galactic Archaeology. The dwarfs that survived and perished
• Too Many, Too Few, or Just Right? The Predicted Number and Distribution of Milky Way Dwarf Galaxies
• Tidal Signatures in the Faintest Milky Way Satellites: The Detailed Properties of Leo V, Pisces II and Canes Venatici II
• Dark Matter in Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies and Indirect Detection: A Review
• The abundance of satellites around Milky Way- and M31-like galaxies with the TNG50 simulation: a matter of diversity
• Modeling the Connection Between Subhalos and Satellites in Milky Way-like Systems
• Discovery of a red ultra-diffuse galaxy in a nearby void based on its globular cluster luminosity function
• Gaia 1 and 2. A pair of new Galactic star clusters
• Chemical Abundances of new member stars in the Tucana II dwarf galaxy
• Antlia B: A faint dwarf galaxy member of the NGC 3109 association
• A fresh look into the interacting dark matter scenario
• How low does it go? Too few Galactic satellites with standard reionization quenching
• The role of faint population III supernovae in forming CEMP stars in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies
• A Deeper Look at Leo IV: Star Formation History and Extended Structure
• Annihilating Asymmetric Dark Matter
• Nine tiny star clusters in Gaia DR1, PS1 and DES
• A Comprehensive Archival Search for Counterparts to Ultra-Compact High Velocity Clouds: Five Local Volume Dwarf Galaxies
• The Cosmic Abundance of Classical Milky Way Satellites
• Intergalactic Gas in Groups of Galaxies: Implications for Dwarf Spheroidal Formation and The Missing Baryons Problem
• Does the Milky Way Obey Spiral Galaxy Scaling Relations?
• Highly r-process enhanced stars in ultra-faint dwarf galaxies
• UniverseMachine: Predicting Galaxy Star Formation over Seven Decades of Halo Mass with Zoom-in Simulations
• Identification of RR Lyrae stars in multiband, sparsely-sampled data from the Dark Energy Survey using template fitting and Random Forest classification
• Tracing stars in Milky Way satellites with A-SLOTH
• Prospects for Detecting Gamma Rays from Annihilating Dark Matter in Dwarf Galaxies in the Era of DES and LSST
• A MegaCam Survey of Outer Halo Satellites. VII. A Single Sérsic Index v/s Effective Radius Relation for Milky Way Outer Halo Satellites
• Resolved Stellar Populations as Tracers of Outskirts
• Kinematics of Type II Cepheids of the Galactic Halo
• MIGHTEE-\HI: Possible interactions with the galaxy NGC~895
• Satellites in the Local Group and Other Nearby Groups
• Galaxies OBserved as Low-luminosity Identified Nebulae (GOBLIN): a catalog of 43,000 high-probability dwarf galaxy candidates in the UNIONS survey
• DELVE Milky Way Satellite Galaxy Census I: Satellite Population and Survey Selection Function in DES, DELVE, and Pan-STARRS
• Timing Mass of the Local Group
• Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of Grus I: A low metallicity ultra-faint dwarf galaxy
• Forward-modelling the Luminosity, Distance, and Size distributions of the Milky Way Satellites