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Main Authors: Vivas, A. Katherina, Walker, Alistair, Martínez-Vázquez, Clara, Cooke, MJ, Gallart, Carme, Monelli, Matteo, Cancino, Jaime A. Rojas, Nidever, David
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05535
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author Vivas, A. Katherina
Walker, Alistair
Martínez-Vázquez, Clara
Cooke, MJ
Gallart, Carme
Monelli, Matteo
Cancino, Jaime A. Rojas
Nidever, David
author_facet Vivas, A. Katherina
Walker, Alistair
Martínez-Vázquez, Clara
Cooke, MJ
Gallart, Carme
Monelli, Matteo
Cancino, Jaime A. Rojas
Nidever, David
contents Crater~II (CraII) is a very intriguing, low-surface brightness and extended galaxy in the vicinity of our Milky Way. Motivated by its huge area and the number of RR Lyrae stars (RRLS) detected near to its core, we performed a follow-up campaign to get deep multi-band ($g,i$) and multi-epoch DECam observations in the outskirts of CraII, covering up to 8$r_h$ in the North-East direction and up to 13$r_h$ in the South-West direction (spanning almost 10 degr in the sky across the galaxy). We confirm the existence of tails coming out from CraII. In our survey, we detected a total of 97 periodic variable stars, of which 46 are CraII members [37 RRLS and 7 anomalous Cepheids (AC)]. The RRLS show a strong gradient in distance of 3.7~kpc/deg, which follows the relation: $d (\rm {kpc}) = (-3.70\pm 0.21)\, ξ' + (116.2 \pm 0.32)$ (where $ξ'$ is the planar coordinate rotated to fit the CraII tails). We also found an indication that the gradient in distance in the distant part of the near-side tail (North-East) may be less steep than it is in the inner $5°$. The leading tail also displays a significant over-density of RRLS located $\sim 3.25$ deg from the center of CraII. Despite covering a smaller area than previous works, our deeper photometry has allowed us to unveil more variable stars in the region and better define the tidal tails of CraII.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_05535
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is Crater II disrupting?
Vivas, A. Katherina
Walker, Alistair
Martínez-Vázquez, Clara
Cooke, MJ
Gallart, Carme
Monelli, Matteo
Cancino, Jaime A. Rojas
Nidever, David
Astrophysics of Galaxies
Crater~II (CraII) is a very intriguing, low-surface brightness and extended galaxy in the vicinity of our Milky Way. Motivated by its huge area and the number of RR Lyrae stars (RRLS) detected near to its core, we performed a follow-up campaign to get deep multi-band ($g,i$) and multi-epoch DECam observations in the outskirts of CraII, covering up to 8$r_h$ in the North-East direction and up to 13$r_h$ in the South-West direction (spanning almost 10 degr in the sky across the galaxy). We confirm the existence of tails coming out from CraII. In our survey, we detected a total of 97 periodic variable stars, of which 46 are CraII members [37 RRLS and 7 anomalous Cepheids (AC)]. The RRLS show a strong gradient in distance of 3.7~kpc/deg, which follows the relation: $d (\rm {kpc}) = (-3.70\pm 0.21)\, ξ' + (116.2 \pm 0.32)$ (where $ξ'$ is the planar coordinate rotated to fit the CraII tails). We also found an indication that the gradient in distance in the distant part of the near-side tail (North-East) may be less steep than it is in the inner $5°$. The leading tail also displays a significant over-density of RRLS located $\sim 3.25$ deg from the center of CraII. Despite covering a smaller area than previous works, our deeper photometry has allowed us to unveil more variable stars in the region and better define the tidal tails of CraII.
title Is Crater II disrupting?
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05535