From the Fire: A Deeper Look at the Phoenix Stream

Abstract

We use six years of data from the Dark Energy Survey to perform a detailed photometric characterization of the Phoenix stellar stream, a 15-degree long, thin, dynamically cold, low-metallicity stellar system in the southern hemisphere. We use natural splines, a non-parametric modeling technique, to simultaneously fit the stream track, width, and linear density. This updated stream model allows us to improve measurements of the heliocentric distance ($17.4\pm 0.1(stat.)\pm 0.8(sys.)$ kpc) and distance gradient ($-0.009\pm 0.006$ kpc deg${}^{-1}$) of Phoenix, which corresponds to a small change of $0.13\pm 0.09$ kpc in heliocentric distance along the length of the stream. We measure linear intensity variations on degree scales, as well as deviations in the stream track on $\sim 2$-degree scales, suggesting that the stream may have been disturbed during its formation and/or evolution. We recover three peaks and one gap in linear intensity along with fluctuations in the stream track. Compared to other thin streams, the Phoenix stream shows more fluctuations and, consequently, the study of Phoenix offers a unique perspective on gravitational perturbations of stellar streams. We discuss possible sources of perturbations to Phoenix including baryonic structures in the Galaxy and dark matter subhalos.

arXiv comment18 Pages, 7 Figures, Matches published version

References in corpus (80)

• emcee: The MCMC Hammer
• The Gaia mission
• LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
• MCMC using Hamiltonian dynamics
• Where are the missing galactic satellites?
• The Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database
• The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way
• The Dark Energy Camera
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos I: Methods
• The Dark Energy Survey: more than dark energy - an overview
• The Field of Streams: Sagittarius and its Siblings
• The Connection between Galaxies and their Dark Matter Halos
• Eight New Milky Way Companions Discovered in First-Year Dark Energy Survey Data
• Eight Ultra-faint Galaxy Candidates Discovered in Year Two of the Dark Energy Survey
• Connecting Galaxies, Halos, and Star Formation Rates Across Cosmic Time
• Detection of massive tidal tails around the globular cluster Pal 5 with SDSS commissioning data
• Great Circle tidal streams: evidence for a nearly spherical massive dark halo around the Milky Way
• Building up the Stellar Halo of the Galaxy
• Earth-mass dark-matter haloes as the first structures in the early Universe
• Mass models of the Milky Way
• The total mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud from its perturbation on the Orphan stream
• The extended tails of Palomar 5: A ten degree arc of globular cluster tidal debris
• Galaxy formation in WMAP1 and WMAP7 cosmologies
• The Dark Energy Survey Data Release 2
• Tango for three: Sagittarius, LMC, and the Milky Way
• Stellar Streams Discovered in the Dark Energy Survey
• A Prescription for Building the Milky Way's Halo from Disrupted Satellites
• Universal structure of dark matter haloes over a mass range of 20 orders of magnitude
• Uncovering CDM halo substructure with tidal streams
• "Skinny Milky Way, Please", says Sagittarius
• Detection of a 60 Degree-Long Dwarf Galaxy Debris Stream
• A 2MASS All-Sky View of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy: III. Constraints on the Flattening of the Galactic Halo
• The Dark Energy Survey Image Processing Pipeline
• How Lumpy is the Milky Way's Dark Matter Halo?
• Precession of the Sagittarius stream
• Dark Energy Survey Year 3 Results: Photometric Data Set for Cosmology
• Hunting for the Dark Matter Wake Induced by the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Spur and the Gap in GD-1: Dynamical evidence for a dark substructure in the Milky Way halo
• The shape of the inner Milky Way halo from observations of the Pal 5 and GD-1 stellar streams
• And yet it moves: The dangers of artificially fixing the Milky Way center of mass in the presence of a massive Large Magellanic Cloud
• Milky Way Satellite Census. I. The Observational Selection Function for Milky Way Satellites in DES Y3 and Pan-STARRS DR1
• Tidal Tails of Star Clusters
• The Streams of the Gaping Abyss: A population of entangled stellar streams surrounding the Inner Galaxy
• Charting the Galactic acceleration field I. A search for stellar streams with Gaia DR2 and EDR3 with follow-up from ESPaDOnS and UVES
• Dark Matter Sub-Halo Counts via Star Stream Crossings
• A sharper view of Pal 5's tails: Discovery of stream perturbations with a novel non-parametric technique
• Piercing the Milky Way: an all-sky view of the Orphan Stream
• On the structure of tidal tails
• Constraining the Milky Way Halo Potential with the GD-1 stellar stream
• The Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey ($S^5$): Overview, Target Selection, Data Reduction, Validation, and Early Science
• STREAMFINDER I: A New Algorithm for detecting Stellar Streams
• A Synoptic Map of Halo Substructures from the Pan-STARRS1 3π Survey
• Measuring the Mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud with Stellar Streams Observed by $S^5$
• Is the dark halo of our Galaxy spherical?
• Forensics of Subhalo-Stream Encounters: The Three Phases of Gap Growth
• Detection of the Milky Way reflex motion due to the Large Magellanic Cloud infall
• Kinematic study of the disrupting globular cluster Palomar 5 using VLT spectra
• Forward Global Photometric Calibration of the Dark Energy Survey
• Stellar Streams and Clouds in the Galactic Halo
• Properties of Dark Subhaloes from Gaps in Tidal Streams
• Gaps in globular cluster streams: giant molecular clouds can cause them too
• Discovery of a cold stellar stream in the ATLAS DR1 data
• Evidence of a population of dark subhalos from Gaia and Pan-STARRS observations of the GD-1 stream
• Reflex motion in the Milky Way stellar halo resulting from the Large Magellanic Cloud infall
• Proper Motions of Stellar Streams Discovered in the Dark Energy Survey
• Broken into Pieces: ATLAS and Aliqa Uma as One Single Stream
• Probing the nature of dark matter particles with stellar streams
• Stray, swing and scatter: angular momentum evolution of orbits and streams in aspherical potentials
• Shepherding Tidal Debris with the Galactic Bar: The Ophiuchus Stream
• Variations in the width, density, and direction of the Palomar 5 tidal tails
• Evidence of a dwarf galaxy stream populating the inner Milky Way Halo
• The tidal remnant of an unusually metal-poor globular cluster
• Probing the nature of dark matter with accreted globular cluster streams
• The Phoenix stream: a cold stream in the Southern hemisphere
• A deeper look at the GD1 stream: density variations and wiggles
• Searching for the GD-1 Stream Progenitor in Gaia DR2 with Direct N-body Simulations
• Discovery of a Stellar Overdensity in Eridanus-Phoenix in the Dark Energy Survey
• The Density Structure of Simulated Stellar Streams
• The Milky Way's stellar streams and globular clusters do not align in a Vast Polar Structure
• Discovery of a thin stellar stream in the SLAMS survey