A Ghost in Boötes: The Least Luminous Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy

Abstract

We report the discovery of Specter, a disrupted ultrafaint dwarf galaxy revealed by the H3 Spectroscopic Survey. We detected this structure via a pair of comoving metal-poor stars at a distance of 12.5 kpc, and further characterized it with Gaia astrometry and follow-up spectroscopy. Specter is a $25^{\circ }\times 1^{\circ }$ stream of stars that is entirely invisible until strict kinematic cuts are applied to remove the Galactic foreground. The spectroscopic members suggest a stellar age $\tau \gtrsim 12$ Gyr and a mean metallicity $⟨\text{[Fe/H]}⟩=-1.84_{-0.18}^{+0.16}$, with a significant intrinsic metallicity dispersion ${\sigma }_{\text{[Fe/H]}}=0.37_{-0.13}^{+0.21}$. We therefore argue that Specter is the disrupted remnant of an ancient dwarf galaxy. With an integrated luminosity $M_{\text{V}}\approx -2.6$, Specter is by far the least-luminous dwarf galaxy stream known. We estimate that dozens of similar streams are lurking below the detection threshold of current search techniques, and conclude that spectroscopic surveys offer a novel means to identify extremely low surface brightness structures.

arXiv comment17 pages, 10 figures. Accepted to ApJ

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