Searching for fossil remnants in the Galactic halo: photometric follow-up of southern CRTScandidates

Chan, Siukuen Josephine; Navarrete, Camila; Catelan, Marcio; Duffau, Sonia; Torrealba, Gabriel. I.; Drake, Andrew J.; Belokurov, Vasily; Koposov, Sergey

Searching for fossil remnants in the Galactic halo: photometric follow-up of southern CRTScandidates

Date

2015

Authors

Chan, Siukuen Josephine

Navarrete, Camila

Catelan, Marcio

Duffau, Sonia

Torrealba, Gabriel. I.

Drake, Andrew J.

Belokurov, Vasily

Koposov, Sergey

Abstract

Observations of the fossil record of the early formation stages of the Milky Way galaxy provide important constraints on cosmological scenarios for the formation of large galaxies like our own. While the northern celestial hemisphere has been extensively examined for the presence and degree of halo substructure, the southern halo has until recently remained "terra incognita" for such studies. However, based on RR Lyrae stars detected in the course of the Catalina Real-time Transients Survey (CRTS), our team has identified a number of new candidate overdensities in the southern Galactic halo (Torrealba et al. 2015, MNRAS, 446, 2251). Here we describe some preliminary results of a deeper search for the Torrealba et al. overdensity candidates, using photometric data from selected wide-field surveys that have mapped the immediate vicinity of some of the more promising among these candidates....