A giant thin stellar stream in the Coma Galaxy Cluster

Abstract

The study of dynamically cold stellar streams reveals information about the gravitational potential where they reside and provides important constraints on dark matter properties. However, their intrinsic faintness makes detection beyond Local environments highly challenging. Here we report the detection of an extremely faint stellar stream (${\mu }_{g,max}=$ 29.5 mag arcsec${}^{-2}$) with an extraordinarily coherent and thin morphology in the Coma Galaxy Cluster. This Giant Coma Stream spans ~510 kpc in length and appears as a free-floating structure located at a projected distance of 0.8 Mpc from the centre of Coma. We do not identify any potential galaxy remnant or core, and the stream structure appears featureless in our data. We interpret the Giant Coma Stream as being a recently accreted, tidally disrupting passive dwarf. Using the Illustris-TNG50 simulation, we identify a case with similar characteristics, showing that, although rare, these types of streams are predicted to exist in $\Lambda$-CDM. Our work unveils the presence of free-floating, extremely faint and thin stellar streams in galaxy clusters, widening the environmental context for their promising future applications in the study of dark matter properties.

Accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (41)

• Diffuse Radio Emission from Galaxy Clusters
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos II: Relating Substructure in Phase- and Abundance-Space to Accretion Histories
• Streams, substructures and the early history of the Milky Way
• Evolutionary stellar population synthesis with MILES - II. Scaled-solar and α-enhanced models
• The Atlas3D project -- XXIX. The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images
• Detection of a 63 Degree Cold Stellar Stream in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Galaxy Groups within 3500 km s${}^{-1}$
• The Burrell Schmidt Deep Virgo Survey: Tidal Debris, Galaxy Halos, and Diffuse Intracluster Light in the Virgo Cluster
• The Cosmic Evolution of Metallicity from the SDSS Fossil Record
• Charting the Galactic acceleration field I. A search for stellar streams with Gaia DR2 and EDR3 with follow-up from ESPaDOnS and UVES
• Halo Mass and Assembly History Exposed in the Faint Outskirts: the Stellar and Dark Matter Haloes of Illustris Galaxies
• Intracluster Light at the Frontier II: The Frontier Fields Clusters
• Discovery of a Giant Stellar Tidal Stream Around the Disk Galaxy NGC 4013
• Lost but not Forgotten: Intracluster Light in Galaxy Groups and Clusters
• The universal nature of subhalo accretion
• On the Origin of Intracluster Light in Massive Galaxy Clusters
• Preparing for low surface brightness science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory: characterisation of tidal features from mock images
• The Gaia DR3 view of dynamical substructure in the stellar halo near the Sun
• MC^2: Constraining the Dark Matter Distribution of the Violent Merging Galaxy Cluster CIZA J2242.8+5301 by Piercing through the Milky Way
• The buildup of the intracluster light of Abell 85 as seen by Subaru's Hyper Suprime-Cam
• Hidden depths in the local Universe: The Stellar Stream Legacy Survey
• Introducing the LBT Imaging of Galactic Halos and Tidal Structures (LIGHTS) survey. A preview of the low surface brightness Universe to be unveiled by LSST
• On structure and kinematics of the Virgo cluster of galaxies
• Detection of Strong Epicyclic Density Spikes in the GD-1 Stellar Stream. An Absence of Evidence for the Influence of Dark Matter Subhalos?
• Like a spider in its web: a study of the Large Scale Structure around the Coma cluster
• Galactic potential constraints from clustering in action space of combined stellar stream data
• Euclid preparation: XVI. Exploring the ultra low-surface brightness Universe with Euclid/VIS
• Two major accretion epochs in M31 from two distinct populations of globular clusters
• A new era of intracluster light studies with JWST
• Discovery and analysis of low-surface-brightness galaxies in the environment of NGC 1052
• Mapping Dark Matter with Extragalactic Stellar Streams: the Case of Centaurus A
• Constraining the Gravitational Potential from the Projected Morphology of Extragalactic Tidal Streams
• How cosmological merger histories shape the diversity of stellar haloes
• The Dynamical Mass of the Coma Cluster from Deep Learning
• A giant umbrella-like stellar stream around the tidal ring galaxy NGC 922
• A feather on the hat: Tracing the giant stellar stream around the Sombrero galaxy
• Prospects for future studies using deep imaging: Analysis of individual Galactic cirrus filaments
• Sky Subtraction in an Era of Low Surface Brightness Astronomy
• RELICS: ICL Analysis of the $z=0.566$ merging cluster WHL J013719.8-08284
• Fractal dimension of optical cirrus in Stripe82
• On the Edge: the relation between stellar and dark matter haloes of Milky Way-mass galaxies

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Euclid: Early Release Observations -- Deep anatomy of nearby galaxies
• CAVITY, Calar Alto Void Integral-field Treasury surveY and project extension
• Deep view of the intracluster light in the Coma cluster of galaxies
• LIGHTS. A robust technique to identify galaxy edges
• Stellar tidal streams around nearby spiral galaxies with deep imaging from amateur telescopes
• Bulgeless Evolution And the Rise of Discs (BEARD) I. Physical drivers of the mass-size relation for Milky Way-like galaxies
• Modeling Tidal Streams and Tidal Tails around Galaxies Using Deep Wendelstein Imaging Data