Searches for New Milky Way Satellites from the First Two Years of Data of the Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey: Discovery of Cetus~III [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1704.05977


We present the results from a search for new Milky Way (MW) satellites from the first two years of data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) $\sim 300$~deg$^2$ and report the discovery of an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy in Cetus. This is the second ultra-faint dwarf we have discovered after Virgo~I reported in our previous paper. This new satellite, Cetus~III, has been identified as a statistically significant (10.7$\sigma$) spatial overdensity of star-like objects, which are selected from a relevant isochrone filter designed for a metal-poor and old stellar population. This stellar system is located at a heliocentric distance of 251$^{+24}{-11}$~kpc with a most likely absolute magnitude of $M_V = -2.4 \pm 0.6$~mag estimated from a Monte Carlo analysis. Cetus~III is extended with a half-light radius of $r_h = 90^{+42}{-17}$~pc, suggesting that this is a faint dwarf satellite in the MW located beyond the detection limit of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We also revisit and update the parameters for Virgo~I finding $M_V = -0.33^{+0.75}{-0.87}$~mag and $r_h = 47^{+19}{-13}$~pc. Using simulations of $\Lambda$-dominated cold dark matter models, we predict that we should find one or two new MW satellites from $\sim 300$~deg$^2$ HSC-SSP data, in rough agreement with the discovery rate so far. The further survey and completion of HSC-SSP over $\sim 1,400$~deg$^2$ will provide robust insights into the missing satellites problem.

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D. Homma, M. Chiba, S. Okamoto, et. al.
Fri, 21 Apr 17
19/73

Comments: 12 pages, 12 figures, submitted to PASJ special issue