Extra-tidal structures around the Gaia Sausage candidate globular cluster NGC6779 (M56)

Abstract

We present results on the stellar density radial profile of the outer regions of NGC6779, a Milky Way globular cluster recently proposed as a candidate member of the Gaia Sausage structure, a merger remnant of a massive dwarf galaxy with the Milky Way. Taking advantage of the Pan-STARRS PS1 public astrometric and photometric catalogue, we built the radial profile for the outermost cluster regions using horizontal branch and main sequence stars, separately, in order to probe for different profile trends because of difference stellar masses. Owing to its relatively close location to the Galactic plane, we have carefully treated the chosen colour-magnitude regions properly correcting them by the amount of interstellar extinction measured along the line-of-side of each star, as well as cleaned them from the variable field star contamination observed across the cluster field. In the region spanning from the tidal to the Jacobi radii the resulting radial profiles show a diffuse extended halo, with an average power law slope of -1. While analysing the relationships between the Galactocentric distance, the half-mass density, the half-light radius, the slope of the radial profile of the outermost regions, the internal dynamical evolutionary stage, among others, we found that NGC6779 shows structural properties similar to those of the remaining Gaia Sausage candidate globular clusters, namely, they are massive clusters (>10^5Mo) in a moderately early dynamical evolutionary stage, with observed extra-tidal structures.

8 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Monthly Noticies of the Royal Astronomical Society

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• A new visit to the variable stars in M56 and its colour magnitude diagram structure