Uniform Modelling of the Stellar Density of Thirteen Tidal Streams within the Galactic Halo

Abstract

We present the results of fitting a flexible stellar stream density model to a collection of thirteen streams around the Milky Way, using photometric data from DES, DECaLS, and Pan-STARRS. We construct density maps for each stream and characterise their tracks on the sky, width, and distance modulus curves along the length of each stream. We use these measurements to compute lengths and total luminosities of streams and identify substructures. Several streams show prominent substructures, such as stream broadening, gaps, large deviations of stream tracks and sharp changes in stream densities. Examining the group of streams as a population, as expected we find that streams with globular cluster progenitors are typically narrower than those with dwarf galaxy progenitors, with streams around 100 pc wide showing overlap between the two populations. We also note the average luminosity of globular cluster streams is significantly lower than the typical luminosity of intact globular clusters. The likely explanation is that observed globular cluster streams preferentially come from lower luminosity and lower density clusters. The stream measurements done in a uniform manner presented here will be helpful for more detailed stream studies such as identifying candidate stream members for spectroscopic follow up and stellar stream dynamical modeling.

25 pages, 40 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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• $S^5$: Probing the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds potentials with the 6-D map of the Orphan-Chenab stream
• Modeling Tidal Streams and Tidal Tails around Galaxies Using Deep Wendelstein Imaging Data
• Inferring the density and membership of stellar streams with flexible models: The GD-1 stream in Gaia Data Release 3
• Towards characterizing dark matter subhalo perturbations in stellar streams with graph neural networks
• Epicyclic Density Variations in the Indus Stellar Stream