Searching Extra-tidal Features around the Globular Cluster Whiting 1

Abstract

Whiting 1 is a faint and young globular cluster in the halo of the Milky Way, and was suggested to have originated in the Sagittarius spherical dwarf galaxy (Sgr dSph). In this paper, we use the deep DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys to explore tentative spatial connection between Whiting 1 and the Sgr dSph. We redetermine the fundamental parameters of Whiting 1 and use the best-fitting isochrone (age $\tau$=6.5 Gyr, metalicity Z=0.005 and ${\mathrm{d}}_{\odot }$=26.9 kpc) to construct a theoretical matched filter for the extra-tidal features searching. Without any smooth technique to the matched filter density map, we detect a round-shape feature with possible leading and trailing tails on either side of the cluster. This raw image is not totally new compared to old discoveries, but confirms that no more large-scale features can be detected under a depth of r<=22.5 mag. In our results, the whole feature stretches 0.1-0.2 degree along the orbit of Whiting 1, which gives a much larger area than the cluster core. The tails on both sides of the cluster align along the orbital direction of the Sgr dSph as well as the cluster itself, which implies that these debris are probably stripped remnants of Whiting 1 by the Milky Way.

10 pages, 9 figures, accepted for the publication of ApJ

References in corpus (17)

• The Gaia mission
• galpy: A Python Library for Galactic Dynamics
• Improving PARSEC models for very low mass stars
• Evidence for Two Early Accretion Events That Built the Milky Way Stellar Halo
• A Vast Thin Plane of Co-rotating Dwarf Galaxies Orbiting the Andromeda Galaxy
• New PARSEC evolutionary tracks of massive stars at low metallicity: testing canonical stellar evolution in nearby star forming dwarf galaxies
• Accurate distances to Galactic globular clusters through a combination of Gaia EDR3, HST and literature data
• The nucleus of the Sagittarius dSph galaxy and M54: a window on the process of galaxy nucleation
• Constraining the thermally-pulsing asymptotic giant branch phase with resolved stellar populations in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Globular Cluster Streams as Galactic High-Precision Scales - The Poster Child Palomar 5
• Whiting 1: the youngest globular cluster associated with the Sgr dSph
• The $>100$ kpc Distant Spur of the Sagittarius Stream and the Outer Virgo Overdensity, as Seen in PS1 RR Lyrae Stars
• An all-sky proper motion map of the Sagittarius stream using Gaia DR2
• A search for stellar tidal debris of defunct dwarf galaxies around globular clusters in the inner Galactic halo
• Detecting the Sagittarius stream with LAMOST DR4 M giants \& Gaia DR2
• Properties of the Young Milky Way Globular Cluster Whiting 1 from Near-Infrared Photometry
• New Determination of Fundamental Properties of Palomar 5 Using Deep DESI Imaging Data