StarStream: Automatic detection algorithm for stellar streams

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Chen, Yingtian, Gnedin, Oleg Y., Price-Whelan, Adrian M., Holm-Hansen, Colin
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Chen, Yingtian
Gnedin, Oleg Y.
Price-Whelan, Adrian M.
Holm-Hansen, Colin
author_facet Chen, Yingtian
Gnedin, Oleg Y.
Price-Whelan, Adrian M.
Holm-Hansen, Colin
contents The Gaia mission has led to the discovery of over 100 stellar streams in the Milky Way, most of which likely originated from globular clusters (GCs). As the upcoming wide-field surveys can potentially continue to increase the number of known streams, there is a growing need to shift focus from manual detection of individual streams to automated detection methods that prioritize both quality and quantity. Traditional techniques rely heavily on the visual expectation that GC streams are dynamically cold and thin. This assumption does not hold for all streams, whose morphologies and kinematics can vary significantly with the progenitor's mass and orbit. As a result, these methods are biased toward a subset of the whole stream population, with often unquantified purity and completeness. In this work, we present StarStream, an automatic stream detection algorithm based on a physics-inspired model rather than visual expectation. Our method provides a more accurate prediction of stream stars in the multi-dimensional space of observables, while using fewer free parameters to account for the diversity of streams. Applied to a mock GC stream catalog tailored for the Gaia DR3 dataset, our algorithm achieves both purity and completeness of at least 65% at Galactic latitudes |b| > 30 degree.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_14929
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle StarStream: Automatic detection algorithm for stellar streams
Chen, Yingtian
Gnedin, Oleg Y.
Price-Whelan, Adrian M.
Holm-Hansen, Colin
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The Gaia mission has led to the discovery of over 100 stellar streams in the Milky Way, most of which likely originated from globular clusters (GCs). As the upcoming wide-field surveys can potentially continue to increase the number of known streams, there is a growing need to shift focus from manual detection of individual streams to automated detection methods that prioritize both quality and quantity. Traditional techniques rely heavily on the visual expectation that GC streams are dynamically cold and thin. This assumption does not hold for all streams, whose morphologies and kinematics can vary significantly with the progenitor's mass and orbit. As a result, these methods are biased toward a subset of the whole stream population, with often unquantified purity and completeness. In this work, we present StarStream, an automatic stream detection algorithm based on a physics-inspired model rather than visual expectation. Our method provides a more accurate prediction of stream stars in the multi-dimensional space of observables, while using fewer free parameters to account for the diversity of streams. Applied to a mock GC stream catalog tailored for the Gaia DR3 dataset, our algorithm achieves both purity and completeness of at least 65% at Galactic latitudes |b| > 30 degree.
title StarStream: Automatic detection algorithm for stellar streams
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.14929