The Milky Way Tomography with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam. II. Global halo structure

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Suzuki, Yoshihisa, Chiba, Masashi, Wyse, Rosemary F. G., Horigome, Shunichi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Suzuki, Yoshihisa
Chiba, Masashi
Wyse, Rosemary F. G.
Horigome, Shunichi
author_facet Suzuki, Yoshihisa
Chiba, Masashi
Wyse, Rosemary F. G.
Horigome, Shunichi
contents We investigate the structure of the Milky Way's stellar halo within 70 kpc of the Sun using a wide-field photometric catalog obtained from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). We employ a large sample of main-sequence turn-off stars as distance tracers. To robustly derive the structural parameters of the stellar halo, we develop a forward-modeling framework that explicitly accounts for distance uncertainties, the solar position, and the limited sky coverage of the survey. Applying this method to the HSC-SSP catalog, we found that the smooth stellar halo is well described by a double power-law density profile, with inner and outer slope of approximately -3.3 and -4.8, respectively, with a break radius of 17.4 kpc. The outer steep density slope derived in this work supports a picture in which the present-day structure of the Milky Way's stellar halo is influenced by early massive accretion events, consistent with inferences from kinematic substructures such as Gaia Enceladus/Sausage. Ongoing wide-field imaging surveys, including UNIONS and LSST, will provide further constraints on the structure of the stellar halo and key insights into its formation history.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_10280
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Milky Way Tomography with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam. II. Global halo structure
Suzuki, Yoshihisa
Chiba, Masashi
Wyse, Rosemary F. G.
Horigome, Shunichi
Astrophysics of Galaxies
We investigate the structure of the Milky Way's stellar halo within 70 kpc of the Sun using a wide-field photometric catalog obtained from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). We employ a large sample of main-sequence turn-off stars as distance tracers. To robustly derive the structural parameters of the stellar halo, we develop a forward-modeling framework that explicitly accounts for distance uncertainties, the solar position, and the limited sky coverage of the survey. Applying this method to the HSC-SSP catalog, we found that the smooth stellar halo is well described by a double power-law density profile, with inner and outer slope of approximately -3.3 and -4.8, respectively, with a break radius of 17.4 kpc. The outer steep density slope derived in this work supports a picture in which the present-day structure of the Milky Way's stellar halo is influenced by early massive accretion events, consistent with inferences from kinematic substructures such as Gaia Enceladus/Sausage. Ongoing wide-field imaging surveys, including UNIONS and LSST, will provide further constraints on the structure of the stellar halo and key insights into its formation history.
title The Milky Way Tomography with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam. II. Global halo structure
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10280