A Pair of Boötes: A New Milky Way Satellite
Abstract
As part of preparations for a southern sky search for faint Milky Way dwarf galaxy satellites, we report the discovery of a stellar overdensity in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5, lying at an angular distance of only 1.5° from the recently discovered Boötes dwarf. The overdensity was detected well above statistical noise by employing a sophisticated data-mining algorithm and does not correspond to any cataloged object. Overlaid isochrones using stellar population synthesis models show that the color-magnitude diagram of that region has the signature of an old (12 Gyr), metal-poor (Fe/H~-2.0) stellar population at a tentative distance of 60 kpc, evidently the same heliocentric distance as the Boötes dwarf. We estimate the new object to have a total magnitude of MV~-3.1+/-1.1 mag and a half-light radius of rh=4.1'+/-1.6' (72+/-28 pc), placing it in an apparent 40 pc < rh < 100 pc void between globular clusters and dwarf galaxies, occupied only by another recently discovered Milky Way satellite, Coma Berenices.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- June 2007
- DOI:
- 10.1086/519684
- arXiv:
- arXiv:0705.1378
- Bibcode:
- 2007ApJ...662L..83W
- Keywords:
-
- Galaxies: Dwarf;
- Galaxies: Local Group;
- Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Accept by ApJL May 9, 2007