Detection of a 63 Degree Cold Stellar Stream in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We report on the detection in Sloan Digital Sky Survey data of a 63 degree-long tidal stream of stars, extending from Ursa Major to Cancer. The stream has no obvious association with the orbit of any known cluster or galaxy. The contrast of the detected stream is greatest when using a star count filter that is matched to the color-magnitude distribution of stars in M 13, which suggests that the stars making up the stream are old and metal poor. The visible portion of the stream is very narrow and about 8.5 kpc above the Galactic disk, suggesting that the progenitor is or was a globular cluster. While the surface density of the stream varies considerably along its length, its path on the sky is very smooth and uniform, showing no evidence of perturbations by large mass concentrations in the nearby halo. While definitive constraints cannot be established without velocity information, the stream's projected path and estimates of its distance suggest that we are observing the stream near the perigalacticon of its orbit.

12 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Updated to correspond to version accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (18)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• A 2MASS All-Sky View of the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy: I. Morphology of the Sagittarius Core and Tidal Arms
• Destruction of the Galactic Globular Cluster System
• Detection of massive tidal tails around the globular cluster Pal 5 with SDSS commissioning data
• A Low Latitude Halo Stream around the Milky Way
• The extended tails of Palomar 5: A ten degree arc of globular cluster tidal debris
• Globular Clusters with Tidal Tails: Deep Two-Color Star Counts
• Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars: A diffuse star cloud or tidal debris around the Milky Way in Triangulum-Andromeda
• The Discovery of Tidal Tails Around NGC 5466
• Detection of a 45 Degree Tidal Stream Associated with the Globular Cluster NGC 5466
• Tracing out the Northern Tidal Stream of the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheoridal Galaxy
• A 22 Degree Tidal Tail for Palomar 5
• The Absolute Proper Motion of Palomar 12: A Case for Tidal Capture from the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• Palomar 13's Last Stand
• Orbits of Globular Clusters in the Outer Galaxy: NGC 7006
• The Main Sequence Luminosity Function of Palomar 5 from HST
• Determining the galactic mass distribution using tidal streams from globular clusters
• A proper motion study of the globular cluster M10

Cited by in corpus (256)

• SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems
• SEGUE: A Spectroscopic Survey of 240,000 stars with g=14-20
• LAMOST Experiment for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (LEGUE) The survey science plan
• Evidence for Two Early Accretion Events That Built the Milky Way Stellar Halo
• Ultra-Light Dark Matter
• The accretion origin of the Milky Way's stellar halo
• Constraining the Milky Way potential with a 6-D phase-space map of the GD-1 stellar stream
• Tracing Galaxy Formation with Stellar Halos II: Relating Substructure in Phase- and Abundance-Space to Accretion Histories
• Wave Dark Matter
• Evidence from the H3 Survey that the Stellar Halo is Entirely Comprised of Substructure
• The total mass of the Large Magellanic Cloud from its perturbation on the Orphan stream
• The VPOS: a vast polar structure of satellite galaxies, globular clusters and streams around the Milky Way
• Cold Dark Matter Substructure and Galactic Disks I: Morphological Signatures of Hierarchical Satellite Accretion
• An Orphan in the "Field of Streams"
• What is a globular cluster? An observational perspective
• Four New Stellar Debris Streams in the Galactic Halo
• J-PLUS: The Javalambre Photometric Local Universe Survey
• Detection of a 60 Degree-Long Dwarf Galaxy Debris Stream
• Sagittarius II, Draco II and Laevens 3: three new Milky Way satellites discovered in the Pan-STARRS 1 3pi Survey
• Precession of the Sagittarius stream
• The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS: III. Stellar Kinematics
• The Velocity Dispersion Profile of the Remote Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy Leo I: A Tidal Hit and Run?
• Gaia reveals a metal-rich in-situ component of the local stellar halo
• The Spur and the Gap in GD-1: Dynamical evidence for a dark substructure in the Milky Way halo
• Luminosity function and radial distribution of Milky Way Satellites in a LCDM Universe
• Globular Cluster Streams as Galactic High-Precision Scales - The Poster Child Palomar 5
• Ghostly Tributaries to the Milky Way: Charting the Halo's Stellar Streams with the Gaia DR2 catalogue
• Clumpy Streams from Clumpy Halos: Detecting Missing Satellites with Cold Stellar Structures
• The shape of the inner Milky Way halo from observations of the Pal 5 and GD-1 stellar streams
• Tidal Tails of Star Clusters
• The Streams of the Gaping Abyss: A population of entangled stellar streams surrounding the Inner Galaxy
• More on the structure of tidal tails
• Charting the Galactic acceleration field I. A search for stellar streams with Gaia DR2 and EDR3 with follow-up from ESPaDOnS and UVES
• The Global Dynamical Atlas of the Milky Way mergers: Constraints from Gaia EDR3 based orbits of globular clusters, stellar streams and satellite galaxies
• The number and size of subhalo-induced gaps in stellar streams
• The Evolution of Wide Binary Stars
• Building the Galactic halo from globular clusters: evidence from chemically unusual red giants
• On the Efficiency of the Tidal Stirring Mechanism for the Origin of Dwarf Spheroidals: Dependence on the Orbital and Structural Parameters of the Progenitor Disky Dwarfs
• Cold Dark Matter Substructure and Galactic Disks II: Dynamical Effects of Hierarchical Satellite Accretion
• Taking the Measure of the Universe: Precision Astrometry with SIM PlanetQuest
• Substructure in Tidal Streams; Tributaries in the Anticenter Ring
• Tidal Tails Test the Equivalence Principle in the Dark Sector
• Characterization and history of the Helmi streams with Gaia DR2
• Galactic Stellar Populations in the Era of SDSS and Other Large Surveys
• The mass of our Milky Way
• Piercing the Milky Way: an all-sky view of the Orphan Stream
• Linear perturbation theory for tidal streams and the small-scale CDM power spectrum
• Constraining the Milky Way Halo Potential with the GD-1 stellar stream
• Off the beaten path: Gaia reveals GD-1 stars outside of the main stream
• Shaken and Stirred: The Milky Way's Dark Substructures
• Novel constraints on the particle nature of dark matter from stellar streams
• Tracing Sagittarius Structure with SDSS and SEGUE Imaging and Spectroscopy
• STREAMFINDER I: A New Algorithm for detecting Stellar Streams
• A Synoptic Map of Halo Substructures from the Pan-STARRS1 3π Survey
• Modeling The Structure And Dynamics of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies with Dark Matter And Tides
• Forensics of Subhalo-Stream Encounters: The Three Phases of Gap Growth
• Mapping the Galactic Halo VIII: Quantifying substructure
• The Subhalo Mass Function and Ultralight Bosonic Dark Matter
• Stream-orbit misalignment I: The dangers of orbit-fitting
• Stellar Streams and Clouds in the Galactic Halo
• The Gravitational Force Field of the Galaxy Measured From the Kinematics of RR Lyrae in Gaia
• Galactic Archaeology. The dwarfs that survived and perished
• The mechanics of tidal streams
• $S^5$: Probing the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds potentials with the 6-D map of the Orphan-Chenab stream
• The outer halo globular cluster system of M31 - II. Kinematics
• Extended stellar systems in the solar neighborhood - II. Discovery of a nearby 120° stellar stream in Gaia DR2
• galstreams: A Library of Milky Way Stellar Stream Footprints and Tracks
• Gaps in globular cluster streams: giant molecular clouds can cause them too
• Tidal debris morphology and the orbits of satellite galaxies
• Insight Into the Formation of the Milky Way Through Cold Halo Substructure. I. The ECHOS of Milky Way Formation
• The information content in cold stellar streams
• The Nature and Origin of Substructure in the Outskirts of M31. I. Surveying the Stellar Content with HST/ACS
• Milky Way Mass and Potential Recovery Using Tidal Streams in a Realistic Halo
• A Cold Milky Way Stellar Stream in the Direction of Triangulum
• Stellar Streams as Probes of Dark Halo Mass and Morphology: A Bayesian Reconstruction
• Dipping Our Toes in the Water: First Models of GD-1 as a Stream
• A Low-Mass Stellar-Debris Stream Associated with a Globular Cluster Pair in the Halo
• The K giant stars from the LAMOST survey data I: identification, metallicity, and distance
• Discovery of a cold stellar stream in the ATLAS DR1 data
• On feathers, bifurcations and shells: the dynamics of tidal streams across the mass scale
• Fourteen candidate RR Lyrae star streams in the inner Galaxy
• Space Velocities of Southern Globular Clusters. V. A Low Galactic Latitude Sample
• Stellar streams around the Magellanic Clouds
• Evidence of a population of dark subhalos from Gaia and Pan-STARRS observations of the GD-1 stream
• Gaps in the GD-1 Star Stream
• Effects of baryonic and dark matter substructure on the Pal 5 stream
• Whiting 1: the youngest globular cluster associated with the Sgr dSph
• Chaotic Dispersal of Tidal Debris
• Proper Motions of Stellar Streams Discovered in the Dark Energy Survey
• An Orbit Fit for the Grillmair Dionatos Cold Stellar Stream
• Broken into Pieces: ATLAS and Aliqa Uma as One Single Stream
• Probing the nature of dark matter particles with stellar streams
• Stray, swing and scatter: angular momentum evolution of orbits and streams in aspherical potentials
• Shepherding Tidal Debris with the Galactic Bar: The Ophiuchus Stream
• Serendipitous Discovery of a Thin Stellar Stream near the Galactic Bulge in the Pan-STARRS1 3Pi Survey
• Tracing the Orphan Stream to 55 kpc with RR Lyrae Stars
• Stellar Population Variations in the Milky Way's Stellar Halo
• Signatures of LCDM substructure in tidal debris
• The Stellar Halo of the Galaxy is Tilted & Doubly Broken
• Kinematics and Chemistry of Stars Along the Sagittarius Trailing Tidal Tail and Constraints on the Milky Way Mass Distribution
• The Century Survey Galactic Halo Project III: A Complete 4300 deg^2 Survey of Blue Horizontal Branch Stars in the Metal-Weak Thick Disk and Inner Halo
• Using gaps in N-body tidal streams to probe missing satellites
• Butterfly in a Cocoon, Understanding the origin and morphology of Globular Cluster Streams: The case of GD-1
• Kinematics and Metallicities in the Bootes III Stellar Overdensity: a Disrupted Dwarf Galaxy?
• The Structure of the Sagittarius Stellar Stream as Traced by Blue Horizontal Branch Stars
• High-resolution spectroscopy of the GD-1 stellar stream localizes the perturber near the orbital plane of Sagittarius
• Dynamical Evolution of Multiple-Population Globular Clusters
• A closer look at the spur, blob, wiggle, and gaps in GD-1
• Detection of Strong Epicyclic Density Spikes in the GD-1 Stellar Stream. An Absence of Evidence for the Influence of Dark Matter Subhalos?
• The Milky Way Tomography with SDSS. V. Mapping the Dark Matter Halo
• The Dominance of Metal-Rich Streams in Stellar Halos: A Comparison Between Substructure in M31 and Lambda-CDM Models
• A deeper look at the GD1 stream: density variations and wiggles
• The AAT/WFI survey of the Monoceros Ring and Canis Major Dwarf galaxy: I. from l = (193 - 276)o
• Phlegethon, a nearby $75°$-long retrograde stellar stream
• Second Data Release of the All-sky NOIRLab Source Catalog
• A Pan-STARRS1 View of the Bifurcated Sagittarius Stream
• Identifying Stellar Streams in Gaia DR2 with Data Mining Techniques
• Searching for the GD-1 Stream Progenitor in Gaia DR2 with Direct N-body Simulations
• Purveyors of fine halos: Re-assessing globular cluster contributions to the Milky Way halo build-up with SDSS-IV
• Detecting the disruption of dark-matter halos with stellar streams
• Core-halo mass relation of ultralight axion dark matter from merger history
• A wide-field photometric survey for extratidal tails around five metal-poor globular clusters in the Galactic halo
• Multiple components of the Jhelum stellar stream
• Via Machinae: Searching for Stellar Streams using Unsupervised Machine Learning
• Constraining the Milky Way Halo Shape Using Thin Streams
• The Vast Polar Structure of the Milky Way Attains New Members
• Galactic potential constraints from clustering in action space of combined stellar stream data
• The Pristine survey -- XVI. The metallicity of 26 stellar streams around the Milky Way detected with the STREAMFINDER in Gaia EDR3
• Don't cross the streams: caustics from Fuzzy Dark Matter
• Another Look at the EBS: A Stellar Debris Stream and a Possible Progenitor
• The stellar velocity distribution function in the Milky Way galaxy
• The Northern wraps of the Sagittarius Stream as traced by Red Clump stars: distances, intrinsic widths and stellar densities
• The SEGUE K Giant Survey. III. Quantifying Galactic Halo Substructure
• Chasing Accreted Structures within Gaia DR2 using Deep Learning
• Action-based distribution function modelling for constraining the shape of the Galactic dark matter halo
• Kinematic Discovery of a Stellar Stream located in Pisces
• An Algorithm for Preferential Selection of Spectroscopic Targets in LEGUE
• Insight Into the Formation of the Milky Way Through Cold Halo Substructure. III. Statistical Chemical Tagging in the Smooth Halo
• The Nature and Orbit of the Ophiuchus Stream
• The discovery of tidal tails around the globular cluster NGC 7492 with Pan-STARRS1
• A Wide-Field View of Leo II -- A Structural Analysis Using the SDSS
• Fishing in Tidal Streams: New Radial Velocity and Proper Motion Constraints on the Orbit of the Anticenter Stream
• Simulating tidal streams in a high resolution dark matter halo
• Death of a cluster: the destruction of M67 as seen by the SDSS
• Statistical detection of a tidal stream associated with the globular cluster M68 using Gaia data
• Maximum Likelihood Fitting of Tidal Streams With Application to the Sagittarius Dwarf Tidal Tails
• Rotating halo traced by the K giant stars from LAMOST and Gaia
• Insight Into the Formation of the Milky Way Through Cold Halo Substructure. II. The Elemental Abundances of ECHOS
• The hidden past of M92: Detection and characterization of a newly formed 17° long stellar stream using the Canada-France Imaging Survey
• A Spectroscopic Survey for Omega Centauri Members at and beyond the Cluster Tidal Radius
• Purveyors of fine halos. II. Chemodynamical association of halo stars with Milky Way globular clusters
• Phase-space correlation in stellar streams of the Milky Way halo: The clash of Kshir and GD-1
• First constraints on Fuzzy Dark Matter from the dynamics of stellar streams in the Milky Way
• The proper motion of Palomar 5
• Fitting orbits to tidal streams with proper motions
• Modeling GD-1 Gaps in a Milky-Way Potential
• Exploring the reality of density substructures in the Palomar 5 stellar stream
• Dispersal of tidal debris in a Milky-Way-sized dark matter halo
• Spectroscopic Confirmation of the Pisces Overdensity
• Hunting the Parent of the Orphan Stream: Identifying Stream Members from Low-Resolution Spectroscopy
• Towards constraining warm dark matter with stellar streams through neural simulation-based inference
• Velocity Dispersion of the GD-1 Stellar Stream
• The Hough Stream Spotter: A New Method for Detecting Linear Structure in Resolved Stars and Application to the Stellar Halo of M31
• Identifying Galactic Halo Substructure in 6D Phase-space Using $\sim$13,000 LAMOST K Giants
• The impact of a massive Sagittarius dSph on GD-1-like streams
• Detecting Thin Stellar Streams in External Galaxies: Resolved Stars & Integrated Light
• Hunting the Parent of the Orphan Stream II: The First High-Resolution Spectroscopic Study
• Detection of a Nearby Halo Debris Stream in the WISE and 2MASS Surveys
• STREAMFINDER II: A possible fanning structure parallel to the GD-1 stream in Pan-STARRS1
• Hubble Space Telescope Proper Motions of Individual Stars in Stellar Streams: Orphan, Sagittarius, Lethe, and the New "Parallel" Stream
• Quantifying the Smoothness of the Stellar Halo: A Link to Accretion History
• At a Crossroads: Stellar Streams in the South Galactic Cap
• The evolution of streams in a time-dependent potential
• Two Distant Halo Velocity Groups Discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory
• The e-TidalGCs Project: Modeling the extra-tidal features generated by Galactic globular clusters
• Probing the Galactic halo with RR Lyrae stars $-$ III. The chemical and kinematic properties of the stellar halo
• Update on the Cetus Polar Stream and its Progenitor
• ALP dark matter with non-periodic potentials: parametric resonance, halo formation and gravitational signatures
• Around The Way: Testing $\Lambda$CDM with Milky Way Stellar Stream Constraints
• DA white dwarfs observed in LAMOST pilot survey
• Hamiltonians of Spherically Symmetric, Scale-Free Galaxies in Action-Angle Coordinates
• Milky Way archaeology using RR Lyrae and type II Cepheids I. The Orphan stream in 7D using RR Lyrae stars
• DELVE-ing into the Jet: a thin stellar stream on a retrograde orbit at 30 kpc
• Incorporating Streams into Milky Way Models
• Finding halo streams with a pencil-beam survey: new wraps in the Sagittarius stream
• The LEGUE Input Catalogue for Dark Night Observing in the LAMOST Pilot Survey
• The structure of accreted stellar streams
• Constraining the primordial curvature perturbation using dark matter substructure
• GD-1 Stellar Stream and Cocoon in the DESI Early Data Release
• ED-2: a cold but not so narrow stellar stream crossing the Solar neighbourhood
• An Orphan No Longer? Detection of the Southern Orphan Stream and a Candidate Progenitor
• Probability of forming gaps in the GD-1 stream by close encounters of globular clusters
• Improved photometry of SDSS crowded field images: Structure and dark matter content in the dwarf spheroidal galaxy Leo I
• Line-of-sight velocity and metallicity measurements of the Palomar 5 tidal stream
• Gaia DR2 orbital properties for field stars with globular cluster-like CN band strengths
• Star Streams and the Assembly History of the Galaxy
• Galactic orbital motions in the Dark Matter, MOdified Newtonian Dynamics and MOdified Gravity scenarios
• Photometric Metallicity Calibration with SDSS and SCUSS and its Application to distant stars in the South Galactic Cap
• The ACTIONFINDER: An unsupervised deep learning algorithm for calculating actions and the acceleration field from a set of orbit segments
• Testing for Dark Matter in the Outskirts of Globular Clusters
• F Turnoff Distribution in the Galactic Halo Using Globular Clusters as Proxies
• GD-1: the relic of an old metal-poor globular cluster
• The Spectacular Tidal Tails of Globular Cluster M3 (NGC 5272)
• A giant thin stellar stream in the Coma Galaxy Cluster
• Member stars of the GD1 tidal stream from the SDSS, LAMOST and Gaia surveys
• Evidence of Fanning in the Ophiuchus Stream
• Euclid: Early Release Observations -- Unveiling the morphology of two Milky Way globular clusters out to their periphery
• On $N$-body simulations of globular cluster stream
• Evidence for C and Mg variations in the GD-1 stellar stream
• The Milky Way Revealed by Variable Stars I: Sample Selection of RR Lyrae stars, and Evidence for the Merger History
• LMC-driven anisotropic boosts in stream--subhalo interactions
• Variation in the Stellar Mass Function Along Stellar Streams
• Astrophysics in 2006
• The Reduced Proper Motion selected halo: methods and description of the catalogue
• Differential rotation of the halo traced by the K-giant stars
• Tidal stripping stellar substructures around four metal-poor globular clusters in the Galactic bulge
• Star Streams in Triaxial Isochrone Potentials with Sub-Halos
• Characterization and dynamics of the peculiar stream Jhelum, A tentative role for the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy
• A Cold Stellar Stream in Pegasus
• Stellar streams and dark substructure: the diffusion regime
• Hidden deep in the halo: selection of a reduced proper motion halo catalogue and mining retrograde streams in the velocity space
• An application of Galactic parallax: the distance to the tidal stream GD-1
• Uniform Modelling of the Stellar Density of Thirteen Tidal Streams within the Galactic Halo
• GCN: a gaseous Galactic halo stream?
• Leaves on trees: identifying halo stars with extreme gradient boosted trees
• Time evolution of gaps in stellar streams in axisymmetric Stäckel potentials
• What a Tangled Web We Weave: Hermus as the Northern Extension of the Phoenix Stream
• Weakly-Supervised Anomaly Detection in the Milky Way
• Galactic Sun's motion in the Cold Dark Matter, MOdified Newtonian Dynamics and MOdified Gravity scenarios
• Flipping of the tidal tails of the Ophiuchus stream due to the decelerating Galactic bar
• Modelling the Track of the GD-1 Stellar Stream Inside a Host with a Fermionic Dark Matter Core-Halo Distribution
• DECam photometry reveals extra-tidal stars around the Milky Way globular cluster NGC 6864 (M75)
• The kinematics of globular clusters systems in the outer halos of the Aquarius simulations
• Gaps in stellar streams as a result of globular cluster fly-bys
• Mapping the Distant and Metal-Poor Milky Way with SDSS-V
• Measuring the Sun's Motion with Stellar Streams
• Residual velocities of Small Magellanic Cloud star clusters
• Chemodynamically Characterizing the Jhelum Stellar Stream with APOGEE-2
• The influence of dark matter halo on the stellar stream asymmetry via dynamical friction
• Candidate members of the Pal 5, GD-1, Cetus Polar, and Orphan tidal stellar halo streams from Sdss DR9, Lamost DR3 and APOGEE catalogues
• A New Cold Stream near the Southern Galactic Pole
• Nearby stellar substructures in the Galactic halo from DESI Milky Way Survey Year 1 Data Release
• An Orbit Fit to Likely Hermus Stream Stars
• On the physical size of the Milky Way globular cluster NGC 7089 (M 2)
• Measurement of Substructure from the Kinematics of the GD-1 Stellar Stream
• A New Tidal Stream Discovered in Gaia DR3
• Inferring the density and membership of stellar streams with flexible models: The GD-1 stream in Gaia Data Release 3
• Semi-Analytic Modeling of Dark Matter Subhalo Encounters with Thin Stellar Streams: Statistical Predictions for GD-1-like Streams in CDM
• Dynamical model of Praesepe and its tidal tails
• Identification of a dwarf galaxy stream in Gaia, and its possible association with the VPOS structure
• Statistical Properties of Blue Horizontal Branch Stars in the Spheroid: Detection of a Moving Group approximately 50 kpc from the Sun
• Towards characterizing dark matter subhalo perturbations in stellar streams with graph neural networks
• The Sagittarius stellar stream embedded in a fermionic dark matter halo
• Epicyclic Density Variations in the Indus Stellar Stream
• Constraining the population of dark matter halo shapes using hierarchical inference with extragalactic stellar streams
• Dwarfs or giants? Stellar metallicities and distances in the Canada-France-Imaging-Survey from $ugrizG$ multi-band photometry