Using A New Model for Main Sequence Turnoff Absolute Magnitudes to Measure Stellar Streams in the Milky Way Halo

Statistical photometric parallax is a method for using the distribution of absolute magnitudes of stellar tracers to statistically recover the underlying density distribution of these tracers. In previous work, statistical photometric parallax was used to trace the Sagittarius Dwarf tidal stream, the so-called bifurcated piece of the Sagittaritus stream, and the Virgo Overdensity through the Milky Way. We use an improved knowledge of this distribution in a new algorithm that accounts for the changes in the stellar population of color-selected stars near the photometric limit of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Although we select bluer main sequence turnoff stars (MSTO) as tracers, large color errors near the survey limit cause many stars to be scattered out of our selection box and many fainter, redder stars to be scattered into our selection box. We show that we are able to recover parameters for analogues of these streams in simulated data using a maximum likelihood optimization on MilkyWay@home. We also present the preliminary results of fitting the density distribution of major Milky Way tidal streams in SDSS data. This research is supported by generous gifts from the Marvin Clan, Babette Josephs, Manit Limlamai, and the MilkyWay@home volunteers.