Typhon: a polar stream from the outer halo raining through the Solar neighborhood

Abstract

We report on the discovery in the Gaia DR3 astrometric and spectroscopic catalog of a new polar stream that is found as an over-density in action space. This structure is unique as it has an extremely large apocenter distance, reaching beyond 100 kpc, and yet is detected as a coherent moving structure in the Solar neighborhood with a width of $\sim 4$ kpc. A sub-sample of these stars that was fortuitously observed by LAMOST has a mean spectroscopic metallicity of $⟨[Fe/H]⟩=-1.60_{-0.16}^{+0.15}$ dex and possesses a resolved metallicity dispersion of $\ddot{I}ƒ([Fe/H])=0.32_{-0.06}^{+0.17}$ dex. The physical width of the stream, the metallicity dispersion and the vertical action spread indicate that the progenitor was a dwarf galaxy. The existence of such a coherent and highly radial structure at their pericenters in the vicinity of the Sun suggests that many other dwarf galaxy fragments may be lurking in the outer halo.

7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication at ApJ. (Table typo corrected)