Reverse engineering the Milky Way

Abstract

The ages, metallicities, alpha-elements and integrals of motion of globular clusters (GCs) accreted by the Milky Way from disrupted satellites remain largely unchanged over time. Here we have used these conserved properties in combination to assign 76 GCs to 5 progenitor satellite galaxies -- one of which we dub the Koala dwarf galaxy. We fit a leaky-box chemical enrichment model to the age-metallicity distribution of GCs, deriving the effective yield and the formation epoch of each satellite. Based on scaling relations of GC counts we estimate the original halo mass, stellar mass and mean metallicity of each satellite. The total stellar mass of the 5 accreted satellites contributed around 10${}^9$ M${}_{\odot }$ in stars to the growth of the Milky Way but over 50\% of the Milky Way's GC system. The 5 satellites formed at very early times and were likely accreted 8--11 Gyr ago, indicating rapid growth for the Milky Way in its early evolution. We suggest that at least 3 satellites were originally nucleated, with the remnant nucleus now a GC of the Milky Way. Eleven GCs are also identified as having formed ex-situ but could not be assigned to a single progenitor satellite.

9 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (48)

• Simulating Galaxy Formation with the IllustrisTNG Model
• The observed properties of dwarf galaxies in and around the Local Group
• The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic and Integrated Properties
• The EAGLE simulations of galaxy formation: calibration of subgrid physics and model variations
• The merger that led to the formation of the Milky Way's inner stellar halo and thick disk
• The Universal Stellar Mass-Stellar Metallicity Relation for Dwarf Galaxies
• Two Stellar Components in the Halo of the Milky Way
• Evidence for Two Early Accretion Events That Built the Milky Way Stellar Halo
• Origin of the system of globular clusters in the Milky Way
• LSD: Lyman-break galaxies Stellar populations and Dynamics. I: Mass, metallicity and gas at z~3.1
• The formation and assembly history of the Milky Way revealed by its globular cluster population
• A dwarf galaxy remnant in Canis Major: the fossil of an in-plane accretion onto the Milky Way
• The origin of accreted stellar halo populations in the Milky Way using APOGEE, $\text{Gaia}$, and the EAGLE simulations
• A Comparison of Elemental Abundance Ratios in Globular Clusters, Field Stars, and Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• The birth of the Milky Way as uncovered by accurate stellar ages with Gaia
• Assessing the Milky Way Satellites Associated with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• The Galaxy-Halo Connection Over The Last 13.3 Gyrs
• The Bifurcated Age-Metallicity Relation of Milky Way Globular Clusters and its Implications For the Accretion History of the Galaxy
• Mapping the substructure in the Galactic halo with the next generation of astrometric satellites
• The Sausage Globular Clusters
• Accreted versus In Situ Milky Way Globular Clusters
• A comprehensive model for the Monoceros tidal stream
• Chemical signatures of formation processes in the stellar populations of simulated galaxies
• Co-orbiting satellite galaxy structures are still in conflict with the distribution of primordial dwarf galaxies
• Characterization and history of the Helmi streams with Gaia DR2
• Extending the Globular Cluster System-Halo Mass Relation to the Lowest Galaxy Masses
• The Chemical Compositions of Accreted and {\it in situ} Galactic Globular Clusters According to SDSS/APOGEE
• A 500 Parsec Halo Surrounding the Galactic Globular NGC 1851
• The Comparative Chemical Evolution of an Isolated Dwarf Galaxy: A VLT and Keck Spectroscopic Survey of WLM
• A Tail of Two Populations: Chemo-dynamics of the Sagittarius Stream and Implications for its Original Mass
• High-Precision Dark Halo Virial Masses from Globular Cluster Numbers: Implications for Globular Cluster Formation and Galaxy Assembly
• The Outer Envelopes of Globular Clusters. II. NGC 1851, NGC 5824 and NGC 1261
• Formation of Multiple Populations in Globular Clusters: Another Possible Scenario
• The Globular Cluster - Dark Matter Halo Connection
• On the origin of the stellar halo and multiple stellar populations in the globular cluster NGC 1851
• The halo+cluster system of the Galactic globular cluster NGC1851
• Distance determination for RAVE stars using stellar models III: The nature of the RAVE survey and Milky Way chemistry
• A Hubble Space Telescope Study of the Enigmatic Milky Way Halo Globular Cluster Crater
• Tails and streams around the Galactic globular clusters NGC1851, NGC1904, NGC2298 and NGC2808
• Fossil stellar streams and their globular cluster populations in the E-MOSAICS simulations
• A Tale Twice Told: The Luminosity Profiles of the Sagittarius Tails
• Two major accretion epochs in M31 from two distinct populations of globular clusters
• Upper Limit on the Milky Way Mass from the Orbit of the Sagittarius Dwarf Satellite
• The [α/Fe]-[Fe/H] relation in the E-MOSAICS simulations: its connection to the birth place of globular clusters and the fraction of globular cluster field stars in the bulge
• Modeling the chemical evolution of Omega Centauri using three-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations
• Old open clusters in the Sagittarius dSph tidal stream -- kith or kin?
• From globular clusters to the disc: the dual life of our Galaxy
• New Candidate Planetary Nebulae in Galactic Globular Clusters from the VVV Survey

Cited by in corpus (107)

• Gaia EDR3 view on Galactic globular clusters
• Evidence from the H3 Survey that the Stellar Halo is Entirely Comprised of Substructure
• Kraken reveals itself -- the merger history of the Milky Way reconstructed with the E-MOSAICS simulations
• Evidence from APOGEE for the presence of a major building block of the halo buried in the inner Galaxy
• The Global Dynamical Atlas of the Milky Way mergers: Constraints from Gaia EDR3 based orbits of globular clusters, stellar streams and satellite galaxies
• Reconstructing the Last Major Merger of the Milky Way with the H3 Survey
• The chemical characterisation of halo substructure in the Milky Way based on APOGEE
• The Poor Old Heart of the Milky Way
• Selecting accreted populations: metallicity, elemental abundances, and ages of the Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus and Sequoia populations
• The Chemo-Dynamical Groups of Galactic Globular Clusters
• Reconstructing the Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy $Gaia$-Sausage/Enceladus Using its Stars and Globular Clusters
• The Accreted Nuclear Clusters of the Milky Way
• Galactic Archaeology with Gaia
• GASTRO library I: the simulated chemodynamical properties of several GSE-like stellar halos
• Nitrogen enrichment and clustered star formation at the dawn of the Galaxy
• Evidence from Disrupted Halo Dwarfs that $r$-process Enrichment via Neutron Star Mergers is Delayed by $\gtrsim 500$ Myrs
• The contribution of N-rich stars to the Galactic stellar halo using APOGEE red giants
• The Kinematic Properties of Milky Way Stellar Halo Populations
• The distribution of globular clusters in kinematic spaces does not trace the accretion history of the host galaxy
• Predicting accreted satellite galaxy masses and accretion redshifts based on globular cluster orbits in the E-MOSAICS simulations
• Clearing the hurdle: The mass of globular cluster systems as a function of host galaxy mass
• The chemical composition of globular clusters in the Local Group
• Cluster Ages to Reconstruct the Milky Way Assembly (CARMA) I. The final word on the origin of NGC6388 and NGC6441
• Discovery of the local counterpart of disc galaxies at z > 4: The oldest thin disc of the Milky Way using Gaia-RVS
• Purveyors of fine halos. II. Chemodynamical association of halo stars with Milky Way globular clusters
• The kinematics of globular cluster populations in the E-MOSAICS simulations and their implications for the assembly history of the Milky Way
• A Photometric Survey of Globular Cluster Systems in Brightest Cluster Galaxies
• Galactic ArchaeoLogIcaL ExcavatiOns (GALILEO) I. An updated census of APOGEE N-rich giants across the Milky Way
• Linking globular cluster formation at low and high redshift through the age-metallicity relation in E-MOSAICS
• Mapping the anisotropic Galactic stellar halo with Blue Horizontal Branch stars
• Discovery of a new nearby globular cluster with extreme kinematics located in the extension of a halo stream
• A census of new globular clusters in the Galactic bulge
• Phase-space Properties and Chemistry of the Sagittarius Stellar Stream Down to the Extremely Metal-poor ($[Fe/H]\lesssim -3$) Regime
• The stellar halo in Local Group Hestia simulations III. Chemical abundance relations for accreted and in-situ stars
• The nature of the Milky Way's stellar halo revealed by the three integrals of motion
• Possibilities and Limitations of Kinematically Identifying Stars from Accreted Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies
• A Blueprint for the Milky Way's Stellar Populations. III. Spatial Distributions and Population Fractions of Local Halo Stars
• A LAMOST BHB Catalog and Kinematics Therein I: Catalog and Halo Properties
• The imprint of clump formation at high redshift. II. The chemistry of the bulge
• Classifying globular clusters and applying them to estimate the mass of the Milky Way
• Excess of Ca (and Sc) produced in globular cluster multiple populations: a first census in 77 Galactic globular clusters
• oMEGACat II -- Photometry and proper motions for 1.4 million stars in Omega Centauri and its rotation in the plane of the sky
• Extending the Chemical Reach of the H3 Survey: Detailed Abundances of the Dwarf-galaxy Stellar Stream Wukong/LMS-1
• CAPOS: The bulge Cluster APOgee Survey III. Spectroscopic Tomography of Tonantzintla 2
• Detecting Globular Cluster Tidal Extensions with Bayesian Inference: I. Analysis of $\omega$ Centauri with Gaia EDR3
• Physical characterization of recently discovered globular clusters in the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy II. Metallicities, ages and luminosities
• Orbits of globular clusters computed with dynamical friction in the Galactic anisotropic velocity dispersion field
• Simulations of globular clusters within their parent galaxies: multiple stellar populations and internal kinematics
• A new set of chisels for Galactic archaeology: Sc, V and Zn as taggers of accreted globular clusters
• The Age-Metallicity-Specific Orbital Energy Relation for the Milky Way's Globular Cluster System Confirms the Importance of Accretion for Its Formation
• Milky Way Subsystems from Globular Clusters Kinematics Using Gaia DR2 and HST Data
• Dynamics of Stellar Disk Tilting from Satellite Mergers
• Signatures of tidal disruption in the Milky Way globular cluster NGC 6981 (M72)
• Chrono-chemodynamical analysis of the globular cluster NGC 6355: Looking for the fundamental bricks of the Bulge
• Abundance ties: Nephele and the globular cluster population accreted with $\omega$ Cen. Based on APOGEE DR17 and Gaia EDR3
• Exploring the chemodynamics of metal-poor stellar populations
• The RR Lyrae projected density distribution from the Galactic centre to the halo
• Gaia-ESO Survey: Detailed elemental abundances in red giants of the peculiar globular cluster NGC 1851
• oMEGACat. VI. Analysis of the overall kinematics of Omega Centauri in 3D: velocity dispersion, kinematic distance, anisotropy, and energy equipartition
• The in situ origin of the globular cluster NGC 6388 from abundances of Sc, V, and Zn of a large sample of stars
• Galaxy archaeology for wet mergers: Globular cluster age distributions in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies
• Chemodynamical study of two CEMP-no stars from the Hamburg/ESO Survey
• Low-Metallicity Globular Clusters in the Low-Mass Isolated Spiral Galaxy NGC 2403
• The surroundings of the Milky Way globular cluster NGC 6809
• Peeking beneath the precision floor -- II. Probing the chemo-dynamical histories of the potential globular cluster siblings, NGC 288 and NGC 362
• Globular Clusters Lost by the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Hubble Space Telescope imaging of the extremely metal-poor globular cluster EXT8 in Messier 31
• The $Hubble$ Missing Globular Cluster Survey. I. Survey overview and the first precise age estimate for ESO452-11 and 2MASS-GC01
• Metallicity of the globular cluster NGC 6388 from high resolution spectra of more than 160 giant stars
• High-Resolution Chemical Abundances of the Nyx Stream
• Globular cluster ages and their relation to high-redshift stellar cluster formation times from different globular cluster models
• DECam photometry reveals extra-tidal stars around the Milky Way globular cluster NGC 6864 (M75)
• First evidence of a stripped star cluster from the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Major Mergers Mean Major Offset: Drivers of Intrinsic Scatter in The $M_{GCS}-M_h$ Scaling Relation for Massive Elliptical Galaxies
• First measurement of the triaxiality of the inner dark matter halo of the Milky Way
• The dual nature of the tidal tails of NGC 5904 (M5)
• Chronology of our Galaxy from Gaia colour-magnitude diagram fitting (ChronoGal) -- III. Age and metallicity distribution of Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus stars near the Sun
• Revealing the Milky Way's Most Recent Major Merger with a Gaia EDR3 Catalog of Machine-Learned Line-of-Sight Velocities
• Investigating Phosphorus Abundances in a Sample of APOGEE-2 Bulge Globular Clusters
• Observing EAGLE galaxies with JWST: predictions for Milky Way progenitors and their building blocks
• A revised view of the Canis Major stellar overdensity with DECam and Gaia: new evidence of a stellar warp of blue stars
• Different Sodium enhancements among multiple populations of Milky Way globular clusters
• Studying Binary Systems in Omega Centauri with MUSE. I. Detection of Spectroscopic Binaries
• Globular clusters in \textsc{OrbIT}: complete dynamical characterisation of the globular cluster population of the Milky Way through updated orbital reconstruction
• Discovery of the shell structure via break radii in the outer halo of the Milky Way
• Chemical tagging with APOGEE, MUSE, and HST: constraints on the formation of $\omega$ Centauri
• Elliptical (E) and ellicular (ES) galaxies in the M_bh-M_*,sph diagram, and a merger-driven explanation for the origin of ES galaxies, anti-truncated stellar discs in lenticular galaxies, and the Sersicification of E galaxy light profiles
• A slow spin to win -- the gradual evolution of the proto-Galaxy to the old disc
• Revisited parameters for the twin bulge globular clusters NGC 6528 and NGC 6553
• Globular cluster candidates in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
• The present-day globular cluster kinematics of lenticular galaxies from the E-MOSAICS simulations and their relation to the galaxy assembly histories
• VEGAS-SSS: An intra-group component in the globular cluster system of NGC 5018 group of galaxies using VST data
• Ages and metallicities of stellar clusters using S-PLUS narrow-band integrated photometry: the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The Spheroidal Bulge of the Milky Way: Chemodynamically Distinct from the Inner-Thick Disc and Bar
• Identifying substructure associations in the Milky Way halo using chemo-kinematic tagging
• Disentanglement of the chemodynamical assembly: mapping the Milky Way disks
• The Origin of the Large Magellanic Cloud Globular Cluster NGC 2005
• Globular clusters as indicators of Galactic evolution
• Chemo-dynamical reconstruction of Milky Way globular cluster progenitors: Age-metallicity relations and the universality of multiple stellar populations
• Homogenous abundances of Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti for about 1500 red giants in 16 globular clusters from FLAMES spectra
• HR-GO II: chemical abundances of low-$E$ retrograde dynamically-tagged-groups: Revealing Thamnos as a very metal-poor substructure
• A population of luminous globular clusters and stripped nuclei with elevated mass to light ratios around NGC 5128
• The progenitor galaxies of stellar haloes as "failed" Milky Ways
• Purveyors of fine halos III. Chemical abundance analysis of a potential omega Cen associate
• Nature and nurture: the dynamical ages of in situ and accreted globular clusters in the Milky Way
• The Escape of Globular Clusters from the Satellite Dwarf Galaxies of the Milky Way
• Indicatives of Early Stages of Star Formation in the Universe