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Two major accretion epochs in M31 from two distinct populations of globular clusters.
journal contribution
posted on 2019-10-24, 08:43 authored by D Mackey, GF Lewis, BJ Brewer, AMN Ferguson, J Veljanoski, AP Huxor, MLM Collins, P Côté, RA Ibata, MJ Irwin, N Martin, AW McConnachie, J Peñarrubia, N Tanvir, Z WanLarge galaxies grow through the accumulation of dwarf galaxies1,2. In principle it is possible to trace this growth history via the properties of a galaxy's stellar halo3-5. Previous investigations of the galaxy Messier 31 (M31, Andromeda) have shown that outside a galactocentric radius of 25 kiloparsecs the population of halo globular clusters is rotating in alignment with the stellar disk6,7, as are more centrally located clusters8,9. The M31 halo also contains coherent stellar substructures, along with a smoothly distributed stellar component10-12. Many of the globular clusters outside a radius of 25 kiloparsecs are associated with the most prominent substructures, but some are part of the smooth halo13. Here we report an analysis of the kinematics of these globular clusters. We find two distinct populations rotating perpendicular to each other. The rotation axis for the population associated with the smooth halo is aligned with the rotation axis for the plane of dwarf galaxies14 that encircles M31. We interpret these separate cluster populations as arising from two major accretion epochs, probably separated by billions of years. Stellar substructures from the first epoch are gone, but those from the more recent second epoch still remain.
Funding
This work is based in part on observations obtained with MegaPrime/MegaCam, a joint project of CFHT and CEA/DAPNIA, at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), which is operated by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique of France, and the University of Hawaii. This work is further based in part on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the NSF on behalf of the Gemini partnership: the National Science Foundation (United States), the National Research Council (Canada), CONICYT (Chile), the Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva (Argentina), the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (Brazil) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Republic of Korea). Some of the data presented here were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation. We wish to recognise and acknowledge the very significant cultural role and reverence that the summit of Maunakea has always had within the indigenous Hawaiian community. We are most fortunate to have the opportunity to conduct observations from this mountain. The William Herschel Telescope (WHT) is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. This work is based in part on observations at Kitt Peak National Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under cooperative agreem
History
Citation
Nature, 2019, 574 (7776), pp. 69-71Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and AstronomyVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
