Distant RR Lyrae from HiTS: Exploring the Outskirts of the Milky Way

Distant RR Lyrae from HiTS: Exploring the Outskirts of the Milky Way

Gustavo Medina Toledo, Ricardo Muñoz, Kathy Vivas, Jeffrey Carlin and Francisco Förster

This contribution presents the results from an RR Lyrae search using data from the High cadence Transient Survey (HiTS), which was carried out with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) imager at the Blanco (4 m) telescope on Cerro Tololo, Chile. HiTS is a campaign primarily aimed at detecting early supernovae explosions in real-time with the deep optical images DECam provides. However, the cadence and the strategy followed for the survey are well matched for RR Lyrae detection as well. Using data from the second and third year of the survey (2014A and 2015A), we were able to detect new RR Lyrae stars out to 200 kpc from the Sun, and to study their possible connection with known or previously undiscovered Milky Way satellite systems and halo substructures. Here we describe these tantalizing detections and further implications.

Proceedings of the Polish Astronomical Society, vol. 6, 42-46 (2018)

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