An orbit fit for the grillmair dionatos cold stellar stream

Abstract

We use velocity and metallicity information from Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration stellar spectroscopy to fit an orbit to the narrow 63° stellar stream of Grillmair and Dionatos. The stars in the stream have a retrograde orbit with eccentricity e = 0.33 (perigalacticon of 14.4 kpc and apogalacticon of 28.7 kpc) and inclination approximately i 35°. In the region of the orbit which is detected, it has a distance of about 7-11 kpc from the Sun. Assuming a standard disk plus bulge and logarithmic halo potential for the Milky Way stars plus dark matter, the stream stars are moving with a large space velocity of approximately 276 km s-1 at perigalacticon. Using this stream alone, we are unable to determine if the dark matter halo is oblate or prolate. The metallicity of the stream is [Fe/H] = -2.1 0.1. Observed proper motions for individual stream members above the main sequence turnoff are consistent with the derived orbit. None of the known globular clusters in the Milky Way have positions, radial velocities, and metallicities that are consistent with being the progenitor of the GD-1 stream. © 2009. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.