The StEllar Counterparts of COmpact high velocity clouds (SECCO) survey. I. Photos of ghosts
Journal
Date Issued
2015
Author(s)
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Beccari, G.
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Battaglia, G.
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Martin, N.
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•
Ibata, R.
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•
•
Sani, E.
Description
We acknowledge the support from the LBT-Italian Coordination Facility for the execution of observations, data distribution, and reduction. We are grateful to Michele Cignoni for providing synthetic populations for our tests on the survey sensitivity. M.B. acknowledge the financial support from the PRIN MIUR 2010-2011 project “The Chemical and Dynamical Evolution of the Milky Way and Local Group Galaxies”, prot. 2010LY5N2T. G. Battaglia gratefully acknowledges support through a Marie-Curie action Intra European Fellowship, funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under Grant agreement number PIEF-GA-2010-274151, as well as the financial support by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the Ramón y Cajal Programme (RYC-2012-11537). This research made use of the SIMBAD database, operated at the CDS, Strasbourg, France. This research made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of NASA’s Astrophysics Data System. This research made use of SDSS data. Funding for the SDSS and SDSS- II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web Site is http://www.sdss.org . The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the American Museum of Natural History, Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, University of Basel, University of Cambridge, Case Western Reserve University, University of Chicago, Drexel University, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, the Korean Scientist Group, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST), Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck- Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory, and the University of Washington.
Abstract
We present an imaging survey that searches for the stellar counterparts of recently discovered ultra-compact high-velocity H i clouds (UCHVC). It has been proposed that these clouds are candidate mini-haloes in the Local Group and its surroundings within a distance range of 0.25-2.0 Mpc. Using the Large Binocular Telescope we obtained wide-field (≃ 23' × 23') g- and r-band images of the twenty-five most promising and most compact clouds amongst the fifty-nine that have been identified. Careful visual inspection of all the images does not reveal any stellar counterpart that even slightly resembles Leo P, the only local dwarf galaxy that was found as a counterpart to a previously detected high-velocity cloud. Only a possible distant (D> 3.0 Mpc) counterpart to HVC274.68+74.70-123 has been identified in our images. The point source photometry in the central 17.3' × 7.7' chips reaches r ≤ 26.5 and is expected to contain most of the stellar counterparts to the UCHVCs. However, no obvious stellar over-density is detected in any of our fields, in marked contrast to our comparison Leo P field, in which the dwarf galaxy is detected at a >30σ-significance level. Only HVC352.45+59.06+263 may be associated with a weak over-density, whose nature cannot be ascertained with our data. Sensitivity tests show that our survey would have detected any dwarf galaxy dominated by an old stellar population, with an integrated absolute magnitude of MV ≤ - 8.0 and a half-light radius of rh ≤ 300 pc that lies within 1.5 Mpc of us, thereby confirming that it is unlikely that the observed UCHVCs are associated with the stellar counterparts typical of known Local Group dwarf galaxies.
Based on data acquired using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The LBT is an international collaboration amongst institutions in the United States, Italy, and Germany. LBT Corporation partners are The University of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona university system; Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Italy; LBT Beteiligungsgesellschaft, Germany, representing the Max-Planck Society, the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, and Heidelberg University; The Ohio State University; and The Research Corporation, on behalf of The University of Notre Dame, University of Minnesota, and University of Virginia.Appendices are available in electronic form at http://www.aanda.org
Volume
575
Start page
A126
Issn Identifier
0004-6361
Ads BibCode
2015A&A...575A.126B
Rights
open.access
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