C-19 Stellar Stream: CASCA 2025

Nasser Mohammed, Joseph Tang, Ting S. Li, DESI Milky Way Survey Working Group

Abstract: Milky Way-like galaxies evolved hierarchically within a dark matter halo, accreting mass through many mergers. Stellar streams are a result of this process, where the host galaxy's potential disrupts satellite dwarf galaxies or globular clusters (GC), leading them to form tidal tails. In this work, we present an update on the kinematic properties of the metal-poor C-19 using data from the first three years of observations from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We identify approximately 60 member stars with line-of-sight velocities, a roughly 2.5 times increase from the most recent measurements. C-19 merits particular interest for two primary reasons. First, while C-19 hosts chemical abundance characteristics of a GC, the observed kinematics of the stream are difficult to reconcile with a purely baryonic, disrupting-GC scenario. Second, its measured metallicity ([Fe/H] ≈ -3.3) makes it the lowest metallicity stellar population known to date, falling below the previously assumed universal metallicity floor. In this presentation, we provide our own analysis of the C-19 stellar stream, characterizing its 6-D kinematics with Bayesian mixture modeling techniques. We present a novel discovery of a "spur" in the C-19 stream, indicative of a past collision with another satellite. We measure a velocity dispersion of 7.9 (+1.4/-1.2) km/s and a metallicity of [Fe/H] = -3.36 (+0.04/-0.04)—in line with previous works identifying C-19 as a "hot," metal-poor stream—and consider these measurements in the context of a perturbed stream at the pericenter of its orbit.

Poster References Acknowledgements