Issue |
A&A
Volume 671, March 2023
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | A141 | |
Number of page(s) | 24 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202245011 | |
Published online | 16 March 2023 |
Hidden depths in the local Universe: The Stellar Stream Legacy Survey
1
Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía, CSIC, Glorieta de la Astronomía, 18080 Granada, Spain
e-mail: dmartinez@iaa.es
2
Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Mönchhofstr. 12–14, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
3
Institute of Astronomy and Department of Physics, National Tsing Hua University, Kuang Fu Rd. Sec. 2, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
4
Center for Informatics and Computation in Astronomy, National Tsing Hua University, Kuang Fu Rd. Sec. 2, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan
5
Max Planck Institut für Astronomie Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
6
Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2, 7XH, UK
7
Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, Department of Physics, New York University, 726 Broadway, New York, NY 10003, USA
8
Siena College, Department of Physics & Astronomy, 515 Loudon Road, Loudonville, NY 12211, USA
9
Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI), The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study (UTIAS), The University of Tokio, Chiba 277-8583, Japan
10
IPAC, Mail Code 314-6, Caltech, 1200 E. California BLVd., Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
11
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Calle Vía Láctea s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
12
Facultad de Física, Universidad de La Laguna, Avda. Astrofísico Fco. Sánchez s/n, 38200 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
13
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline St N, Waterloo, Canada
14
Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nizhnij Arkhyz 369167, Russia
15
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA
16
UAI – Unione Astrofili Italiani/P.I. Sezione Nazionale di Ricerca Profondo Cielo, 72024 Oria, Italy
17
National Centre for Nuclear Research, ul. Pasteura 7, 02-093 Warszawa, Poland
18
Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Plaza de las Ciencias, 28040 Madrid, Spain
19
AIM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Université de Paris, Orme des Merisiers, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
20
Institute of Space Sciences (ICE,CSIC), Campus UAB, Carrer de Magrans, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
21
Institute for Computational Cosmology, Department of Physics, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK
22
Astrophysics Source Code Library, University of Maryland, 4254, Stadium Drive College Park, MD 20742, USA
23
Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Postdam (AIP), An der Sternwarte 16, 14482 Postdam, Germany
24
NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, 950 N. Cherry Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
25
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Rd., Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
26
Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Wyoming, 1000 E. University, Dept. 3905, Laramie, WY 82071, USA
27
Physics Division, National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taipei 10617, Taiwan
28
Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Unidad Asociada al CSIC, Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
Received:
19
September
2022
Accepted:
29
November
2022
Context. Mergers and tidal interactions between massive galaxies and their dwarf satellites are a fundamental prediction of the Lambda-cold dark matter cosmology. These events are thought to provide important observational diagnostics of non-linear structure formation. Stellar streams in the Milky Way and Andromeda are spectacular evidence for ongoing satellite disruption. However, constructing a statistically meaningful sample of tidal streams beyond the Local Group has proven a daunting observational challenge, and the full potential for deepening our understanding of galaxy assembly using stellar streams has yet to be realised.
Aims. Here we introduce the Stellar Stream Legacy Survey, a systematic imaging survey of tidal features associated with dwarf galaxy accretion around a sample of ∼3100 nearby galaxies within z ∼ 0.02, including about 940 Milky Way analogues.
Methods. Our survey exploits public deep imaging data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, which reach surface brightness as faint as ∼29 mag arcsec−2 in the r band. As a proof of concept of our survey, we report the detection and broad-band photometry of 24 new stellar streams in the local Universe.
Results. We discuss how these observations can yield new constraints on galaxy formation theory through comparison to mock observations from cosmological galaxy simulations. These tests will probe the present-day mass assembly rate of galaxies, the stellar populations and orbits of satellites, the growth of stellar halos, and the resilience of stellar disks to satellite bombardment.
Key words: galaxies: interactions / galaxies: dwarf / galaxies: formation / surveys
© The Authors 2023
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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