The Streams of the Gaping Abyss: A population of entangled stellar streams surrounding the Inner Galaxy

Abstract

We present the discovery of a large population of stellar streams that surround the inner Galaxy, found in the Gaia DR2 catalog using the new STREAMFINDER algorithm. Here we focus on the properties of eight new high-significance structures found at Heliocentric distances between 1 and 10 kpc and at Galactic latitudes $|b|>20°$, named Slidr, Sylgr, Ylgr, Fimbulthul, Svöl, Fjörm, Gjöll and Leiptr. Spectroscopic measurements of seven of the streams confirm the detections, which are based on Gaia astrometry and photometry alone, and show that these streams are predominantly metal-poor. The sample possesses diverse orbital properties, although most of the streams appear to be debris of inner-halo globular clusters. Many more candidate streams are visible in our maps, but require follow-up spectroscopy to confirm their nature. We also explain in detail the workings of the algorithm, and gauge the incidence of false detections by running the algorithm on a smooth model of the Gaia catalog.

23 pages, 23 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

References in corpus (5)

• Detection of a 63 Degree Cold Stellar Stream in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Synoptic Map of Halo Substructures from the Pan-STARRS1 3π Survey
• Gaps in globular cluster streams: giant molecular clouds can cause them too
• The Complex Structure of Stars in the Outer Galactic Disk as revealed by Pan-STARRS1
• Chemical Mapping of the Milky Way With The Canada-France Imaging Survey: A Non-parametric Metallicity-Distance Decomposition of the Galaxy

Cited by in corpus (112)

• Euclid. I. Overview of the Euclid mission
• Streams, substructures and the early history of the Milky Way
• Kraken reveals itself -- the merger history of the Milky Way reconstructed with the E-MOSAICS simulations
• Charting the Galactic acceleration field I. A search for stellar streams with Gaia DR2 and EDR3 with follow-up from ESPaDOnS and UVES
• The Global Dynamical Atlas of the Milky Way mergers: Constraints from Gaia EDR3 based orbits of globular clusters, stellar streams and satellite galaxies
• Overview of the DESI Milky Way Survey
• Selecting accreted populations: metallicity, elemental abundances, and ages of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus and Sequoia populations
• galstreams: A Library of Milky Way Stellar Stream Footprints and Tracks
• $S^5$: The Orbital and Chemical Properties of One Dozen Stellar Streams
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. XXIII. Proper-motion catalogs and internal kinematics
• Reconstructing the Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy $Gaia$-Sausage/Enceladus Using its Stars and Globular Clusters
• The Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5): Chemical Abundances of Seven Stellar Streams
• Orbital Clustering Identifies the Origins of Galactic Stellar Streams
• Galactic Archaeology with Gaia
• Broken into Pieces: ATLAS and Aliqa Uma as One Single Stream
• The Pristine survey VIII: The metallicity distribution function of the Milky Way halo down to the extremely metal-poor regime
• A supra-massive population of stellar-mass black holes in the globular cluster Palomar 5
• Variations in the width, density, and direction of the Palomar 5 tidal tails
• The eye of Gaia on globular clusters structure: tidal tails
• An all-sky proper motion map of the Sagittarius stream using Gaia DR2
• Evidence of a dwarf galaxy stream populating the inner Milky Way Halo
• A panoramic landscape of the Sagittarius stream in Gaia DR2 revealed with the STREAMFINDER spyglass
• Full 5D characterisation of the Sagittarius stream with Gaia DR2 RR Lyrae
• Probing the nature of dark matter with accreted globular cluster streams
• Chemodynamics of newly identified giants with globular cluster like abundance patterns in the bulge, disk, and halo of the Milky Way
• Introducing EMP-Pathfinder: modelling the simultaneous formation and evolution of stellar clusters in their host galaxies
• The effects of dynamical substructure on Milky Way mass estimates from the high velocity tail of the local stellar halo
• Microarcsecond Astrometry: Science Highlights from Gaia
• Detection of Strong Epicyclic Density Spikes in the GD-1 Stellar Stream. An Absence of Evidence for the Influence of Dark Matter Subhalos?
• Via Machinae: Searching for Stellar Streams using Unsupervised Machine Learning
• Galactic potential constraints from clustering in action space of combined stellar stream data
• The Pristine survey -- XVI. The metallicity of 26 stellar streams around the Milky Way detected with the STREAMFINDER in Gaia EDR3
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood - III. Like ships in the night: the Coma Berenices neighbor moving group
• The Complexity of the Cetus Stream Unveiled from the Fusion of STREAMFINDER and StarGO
• The S2 Stream: the shreds of a primitive dwarf galaxy
• A deep view into the nucleus of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy with MUSE. II. Kinematic characterization of the stellar populations
• The Detailed Science Case for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, 2019 edition
• Homogeneous Analysis of Globular Clusters from the APOGEE Survey with the BACCHUS Code $-$ III. $\omega$ Cen
• Phase-space correlation in stellar streams of the Milky Way halo: The clash of Kshir and GD-1
• Purveyors of fine halos. II. Chemodynamical association of halo stars with Milky Way globular clusters
• The hidden past of M92: Detection and characterization of a newly formed 17° long stellar stream using the Canada-France Imaging Survey
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood. IV. Meingast 1: the most massive stellar stream in the solar neighborhood
• The Hough Stream Spotter: A New Method for Detecting Linear Structure in Resolved Stars and Application to the Stellar Halo of M31
• R-process-rich stellar streams in the Milky Way
• Combined APOGEE-GALAH stellar catalogues using the Cannon
• Astrophysical Parameters from Gaia DR2, 2MASS & AllWISE
• The GALAH Survey: Chemically tagging the Fimbulthul stream to the globular cluster $\omega$ Centauri
• A new calibration method of sub-halo orbital evolution for semi-analytic models
• Tidal tails of open clusters
• Milky Way archaeology using RR Lyrae and type II Cepheids II. High velocity RR Lyrae stars, and mass of the Milky Way
• A chemo-dynamical link between the Gjöll stream and NGC 3201
• The e-TidalGCs Project: Modeling the extra-tidal features generated by Galactic globular clusters
• The oblateness of the Milky Way dark matter halo from the stellar streams of NGC 3201, M68, and Palomar 5
• Creation/destruction of ultra-wide binaries in tidal streams
• The GALAH Survey: Accreted stars also inhabit the Spite Plateau
• The tidal stream generated by the globular cluster NGC 3201
• On the Chemical and Kinematic Consistency Between N-rich Metal-poor Field Stars and Enriched Populations in Globular Clusters
• The outer disc in shambles: blind detection of Monoceros and ACS with Gaia's astrometric sample
• Milky Way archaeology using RR Lyrae and type II Cepheids I. The Orphan stream in 7D using RR Lyrae stars
• The Pristine survey XVIII: C-19: Tidal debris of a dark matter-dominated globular cluster?
• Detecting Globular Cluster Tidal Extensions with Bayesian Inference: I. Analysis of $\omega$ Centauri with Gaia EDR3
• 1-DREAM: 1D Recovery, Extraction and Analysis of Manifolds in noisy environments
• Uncovering fossils of the distant Milky Way with UNIONS: NGC 5466 and its stellar stream
• Extragalactic Stellar Tidal Streams in the Dark Energy Survey
• ED-2: a cold but not so narrow stellar stream crossing the Solar neighbourhood
• Gaia Focused Product Release: Sources from Service Interface Function image analysis -- Half a million new sources in omega Centauri
• Gaia DR2 orbital properties for field stars with globular cluster-like CN band strengths
• The retrograde orbit of the globular cluster FSR1758 revealed with Gaia DR2
• Charting Galactic Accelerations with Stellar Streams and Machine Learning
• The Extended Tidal Tails of NGC 7089 (M2)
• New constraints on the dark matter density profiles of dwarf galaxies from proper motions of globular cluster streams
• Potential Black Hole Seeding of the Spiral Galaxy NGC 4424 via an Infalling Star Cluster
• A search for stellar tidal streams around Milky Way analogues from the SAGA sample
• Hunting ghosts: the iconic stellar stream(s) around NG5907 under scrutiny
• Extra-tidal star candidates in globular clusters of the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy
• Evidence for C and Mg variations in the GD-1 stellar stream
• The Reduced Proper Motion selected halo: methods and description of the catalogue
• Tidal debris from Omega Centauri discovered with unsupervised machine learning
• Stellar streams and dark substructure: the diffusion regime
• Astrometric Weak Lensing with Gaia DR3 and Future Catalogs: Searches for Dark Matter Substructure
• The S-PLUS Ultra-Short Survey: first data release
• Auriga Streams I: disrupting satellites surrounding Milky Way-mass haloes at multiple resolutions
• Extragalactic Stellar Tidal Streams: Observations meet Simulation
• Prospects for Detecting Gaps in Globular Cluster Stellar Streams in External Galaxies with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
• Chemical Abundances of the Typhon Stellar Stream
• L-GALAXIES 2020: The formation and chemical evolution of stellar haloes in Milky Way Analogues and galaxy clusters
• The Multiple Extended Tidal Tails of NGC 288
• Time evolution of gaps in stellar streams in axisymmetric Stäckel potentials
• RR Lyrae stars as probes of the outer Galactic halo: Chemical and kinematic analysis of a pilot sample
• Young stars raining through the Galactic Halo: the nature and orbit of Price-Whelan 1
• A Ghost in Boötes: The Least Luminous Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy
• Gaps in stellar streams as a result of globular cluster fly-bys
• Chemodynamically Characterizing the Jhelum Stellar Stream with APOGEE-2
• Combining Astrometry and Elemental Abundances: The Case of the Candidate Pre-Gaia Halo Moving Groups G03-37, G18-39, and G21-22
• Field linkage and magnetic helicity density
• Nearby stellar substructures in the Galactic halo from DESI Milky Way Survey Year 1 Data Release
• The Gaia RVS benchmark stars II. A sample of stars selected for their Gaia high radial velocity
• Orbital phase-driven biases in Galactic mass constraints from stellar streams
• The Chemodynamical Nature of the Triangulum-Andromeda Overdensity
• The nature of the Eastern Extent in the outer halo of M31
• Astrophysical Tests of Dark Matter with Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer
• The Nephele ecosystem: stars, globular clusters, and stellar streams associated with the progenitor galaxy of $\omega$ Centauri
• Multi-wavelength observations of the Galactic X-ray binaries IGR J20155+3827 and Swift J1713.4-4219
• The Phoenix stellar stream rose from the ashes of an ancient star cluster
• An efficient integrator for stellar dynamics in effective gravity fields based on the isochrone potential
• Towards characterizing dark matter subhalo perturbations in stellar streams with graph neural networks
• Tidal Disruption of Super Star Clusters as the origin of Bluish Light at the inner region of the Perseus Cluster Central Galaxy
• From the Fire: A Deeper Look at the Phoenix Stream
• Globular Clusters in the Sagittarius stream. Revising members and candidates with Gaia DR2
• A search for stellar structures around nine outer halo globular clusters in the Milky Way
• No Stream Left Unscathed: The imprint of a host galaxy
• Tracing Milky Way substructure with an RR Lyrae hierarchical clustering forest