Tidal Stripping Substructure on Spatial Distribution of Stars in Several Globular Clusters from UKIRT Observation

  • 발행 : 2013.10.08

초록

The hierarchical model of galaxy formation predicts that galaxy halos contain merger relics in the form of long stellar stream. Thus, tidal substructure of stars around globular clusters, such as tidal tails, could be an essential evidence of the merging scenario in the formation of the Galaxy. From April 2010 to December 2012, we obtained $45^{\prime}{\times}45^{\prime}$ wide-field JHKs near-infrared photometric imaging data for about 20 globular clusters in the Milky Way, and examined the stellar density distribution around globular clusters. Here, we introduce the preliminary results of stellar spatial distributions and radial surface density profiles of four globular clusters. In order to minimize the field star contamination and identify the cluster's member candidates stars, we used a statistical filtering algorithm and gave weights on the CMDs of globular clusters. In two-dimensional stellar density maps, we could found tidal stripping structures for some globular clusters. The orientation of tidal substructure seems to associate with the effects of dynamical interactions with the Galaxy and cluster's orbit. Indeed, the radial surface density profile accurately describes this stripping structures as a break in the slope of profile. The observational results could give us further observational evidence of merging scenario of the formation of the Galaxy.

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