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Revised and New Proper Motions for Confirmed and Candidate Milky Way Dwarf Galaxies

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Published 2020 August 21 © 2020. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
, , Citation Alan W. McConnachie and Kim A. Venn 2020 AJ 160 124 DOI 10.3847/1538-3881/aba4ab

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Abstract

A new derivation of systemic proper motions of Milky Way satellites is presented and applied to 59 confirmed or candidate dwarf galaxy satellites using Gaia Data Release 2. This constitutes all known Milky Way dwarf galaxies (and likely candidates) as of 2020 May, except for the Magellanic Clouds, the Canis Major and Hydra 1 stellar overdensities, and the tidally disrupting Bootes III and Sagittarius dwarf galaxies. We derive systemic proper motions for the first time for Indus 1, DES J0225+0304, Cetus 2, Pictor 2, and Leo T, but note that the latter three rely on photometry that is of poorer quality than that of the rest of the sample. We cannot resolve a signal for Bootes 4, Cetus 3, Indus 2, Pegasus 3, or Virgo 1. Our method is inspired by the maximum likelihood approach of Pace & Li and examines simultaneously the spatial, color–magnitude, and proper motion distribution of sources. Systemic proper motions are derived without the need to identify confirmed radial velocity members, although the proper motions of these stars, where available, are incorporated into the analysis through a prior on the model. The associated uncertainties on the systemic proper motions are on average a factor of ∼1.4 smaller than existing literature values. Analysis of the implied membership distribution of the satellites suggests that we accurately identify member stars with a contamination rate lower than 1 in 20.

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1. Introduction

With respect to the formation and evolution of nearby dwarf galaxies, few areas of research are more satisfying than the study of the orbital dynamics of Milky Way satellites. Almost every other aspect of the evolution of dwarf galaxies appears to be affected by a multitude of unknown (or only partially understood) physical processes. For many areas of interest, such as the star formation histories of dwarfs or their chemical evolution, these physical processes ordinarily combine to create a level of complexity per unit stellar mass that can appear to be out of whack compared to the meagre luminosities of dwarf galaxies. But for their orbits at least, only gravity really matters.

The Second Data Release from Gaia (DR2; Gaia Collaboration et al. 2018b)—to be followed in the near future with Early Data Release 3 (EDR3)—is a particularly impressive resource for near-field cosmology. From a user perspective, it has transformed what is ultimately an incredibly complex and sensitive measurement—that of the absolute proper motion of intrinsically rather faint stars—into a measurement that is now readily available for more than one billion objects in the sky. Combined with precision radial velocities and their positions, complete knowledge of the space motions of the Milky Way satellites allows both a better estimation of the mass profile of the Galaxy (e.g., Eadie & Jurić 2019; Posti & Helmi 2019; Watkins et al. 2019; Cautun et al. 2020; Fritz et al. 2020; Li et al. 2020), and an estimation of the orbital histories of the satellites (e.g., Gaia Collaboration et al. 2018c; Fritz et al. 2018; Simon 2018; Patel et al. 2019; Erkal & Belokurov 2020).

The past two years has seen several influential papers demonstrating the utility of Gaia DR2 for dwarf galaxy proper motions, starting with Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c). This paper studied the brighter dwarfs, for which there are generally hundreds or more member stars in Gaia DR2, and determined systemic proper motions through an iterative procedure whereby a first estimate of the proper motion is refined by comparison to the data. Subsequent work included these brighter satellites, but also started to include the fainter satellites, where there are far fewer member stars expected in Gaia DR2. Initially, these studies estimated systemic proper motions by taking a weighted mean of "known" members, that is, stars that were considered high-likelihood members based upon spectroscopy. To be targeted for spectroscopy in the first place implies that they also had consistent positions on the sky and color–magnitude information, and importantly, they were known to have consistent radial velocities (as well as potentially other spectroscopic information, such as metallicities; Fritz et al. 2018, 2019; Kallivayalil et al. 2018; Longeard et al. 2018, 2020b; Simon 2018; Simon et al. 2020). A variant of this technique was introduced by Massari & Helmi (2018). It measures systemic proper motions incorporating information from stars that have not necessarily been spectroscopically "pre-confirmed" as members. A first estimate of the proper motion was made from either radial velocity members, or from candidate blue horizontal branch stars, and an iterative procedure refined these estimates based on all plausible members in the vicinity (in proper motion space, color–magnitude space, and on-sky location).

Particularly relevant to the current study is the work of Pace & Li (2019). These authors were able to estimate the proper motions of 13 dwarf galaxies without any dependence on "known" members. Rather, they selected stars in the appropriate regions of the color–magnitude diagram (CMD), and created a mixture model for the data comprising both satellite members and contamination from the Milky Way. They considered spatial and proper motion information, and sought to find the systemic proper motion for the satellite that maximizes the likelihood of the data set. This involved the creation of models of the Milky Way contamination, and did not use any radial velocity information. This technique was very successful, and they showed good consistency with the radial velocity-based methods (see also confirmation of their technique for several objects by Simon et al. 2020). Their technique has since been applied to the recent discovery of Bliss 1 and Centaurus 1 (Mau et al. 2019, 2020).

Here, we present a new algorithm for the determination of satellite proper motions that is based on the method of Pace & Li (2019). Unlike those authors, we develop completely empirical models for the foreground that do not require us to marginalize over additional unknown parameters, and we incorporate radial velocity information if it exists. These modifications allow us to determine proper motions for some systems for which Pace & Li (2019) were unable to derive solutions, and we argue that the remaining satellites in our sample for which we do not have solutions are due to a lack of any member stars with reliable data in Gaia DR2. Despite the subject of this paper, our ultimate goal is not to determine the systemic proper motions of dwarfs, but to focus on the related problem of correctly identifying member stars for detailed follow-up, which will be the subject of future contributions. As such, we examine the contamination and completeness of our member selections as a way to determine the robustness of our algorithm, and we present evidence that suggests that we are able to identify member stars (without requiring radial velocities) with a contamination rate of ≲5%. In Section 2 we present our galaxy sample and the relevant data. Section 3 describes our methodology, and Section 4 presents our results, which we summarize in Section 5.

2. Target Galaxies and Data Preparation

2.1. Dwarf Galaxy Candidates

We use the updated and curated list of nearby galaxies from McConnachie (2012) to define our target sample.3 This list contains both confirmed dwarf galaxies and possible candidates. The latter category includes systems that may actually be globular clusters (such as Eridanus 3; see Conn et al. 2018a), or objects that may not actually be stellar systems (e.g., see the discussion of Tucana 5 and Cetus 2 in Simon et al. 2020 and Conn et al. 2018b, respectively). We stress that it is not the purpose of this paper to discuss the reality or otherwise of all these systems, but rather to determine if a systemic proper motion can be derived based on the assumption that they are real stellar systems.

We consider all galaxies within 450 kpc of the Sun (i.e., out to and including Leo T). We do not consider the Magellanic Clouds; excellent and comprehensive studies of the proper motions of these galaxies can be found in Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c) as well as Kallivayalil et al. (2013) and related work. Similarly, we do not consider the Sagitarrius dwarf galaxy, whose stars extend across the entire sky and which has recently been explored using Gaia DR2 by Ibata et al. (2020). Further, we do not consider the Canis Major (Martin et al. 2004), Hydra 1 (Grillmair 2011), and Bootes 3 (Grillmair 2009) stellar overdensities. The nature of these structures, especially for the first two, remains uncertain (but see Hargis et al. 2016). For the latter, Bootes 3 is likely the projenitor of the Styx stellar stream (Carlin & Sand 2018). Reliable structural parameters are not available for any of these three systems; these parameters are a prerequisite for our method.

Table 1 gives a list of all Milky Way satellites considered in this paper, along with positional information, structural parameters, mean metallicities, and radial velocity information, where these data exist. Figure 1 shows an Aitoff projection of the spatial distribution of all the satellites in equatorial coordinates.

Figure 1.

Figure 1. Aitoff projection of all Milky Way dwarf galaxies and candidates within a distance of 450 kpc from the Sun. Objects labeled with gray italic font are not considered in this paper.

Standard image High-resolution image

Table 1.  All Milky Way Dwarf Galaxies and Candidates that Are Considered in This Paper, along with Relevant Positional, Structural, Radial Velocity, and Metallicity Parameters

Galaxy R.A. (deg) Decl. (deg) ${(m-M)}_{0}$ rh (arcmin) $e=1-b/a$ θ° vh (km s−1) σv (km s−1) $\langle [\mathrm{Fe}/{\rm{H}}]\rangle $
Antlia2 143.8867 −36.7672 ${20.6}_{-0.11}^{+0.11}$ ${76.2}_{-7.2}^{+7.2}$ ${0.38}_{-0.08}^{+0.08}$ ${156.0}_{-6.0}^{+6.0}$ ${290.7}_{-0.5}^{+0.5}$ ${5.71}_{-1.08}^{+1.08}$ $-{1.36}_{-0.04}^{+0.04}$
Aquarius2 338.4812 −9.3275 ${20.16}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$ ${5.1}_{-0.8}^{+0.8}$ ${0.39}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$ ${121.0}_{-9.0}^{+9.0}$ $-{71.1}_{-2.5}^{+2.5}$ ${5.4}_{-0.9}^{+3.4}$ $-{2.3}_{-0.5}^{+0.5}$
Bootes1 210.025 14.5 ${19.11}_{-0.08}^{+0.08}$ ${11.26}_{-0.27}^{+0.27}$ ${0.25}_{-0.02}^{+0.02}$ ${7.0}_{-3.0}^{+3.0}$ ${99.0}_{-2.1}^{+2.1}$ ${2.4}_{-0.5}^{+0.9}$ $-{2.55}_{-0.11}^{+0.11}$
Bootes2 209.5 12.85 ${18.1}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$ ${3.05}_{-0.45}^{+0.45}$ ${0.24}_{-0.12}^{+0.12}$ $-{70.0}_{-27.0}^{+27.0}$ $-{117.0}_{-5.2}^{+5.2}$ ${10.5}_{-7.4}^{+7.4}$ $-{1.79}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$
Bootes4 233.6892 43.7261 ${21.6}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${7.6}_{-0.8}^{+0.8}$ ${0.64}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ ${3.0}_{-4.0}^{+4.0}$
CanesVenatici1 202.0146 33.5558 ${21.69}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${8.9}_{-0.4}^{+0.4}$ ${0.39}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ ${70.0}_{-4.0}^{+4.0}$ ${30.9}_{-0.6}^{+0.6}$ ${7.6}_{-0.4}^{+0.4}$ $-{1.98}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
CanesVenatici2 194.2917 34.3208 ${21.02}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$ ${1.51}_{-0.23}^{+0.23}$ ${0.46}_{-0.11}^{+0.11}$ ${10.0}_{-11.0}^{+11.0}$ $-{128.9}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ ${4.6}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ $-{2.21}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$
Carina 100.4029 −50.9661 ${20.11}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$ ${11.43}_{-0.12}^{+0.12}$ ${0.37}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$ ${60.0}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ ${222.9}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${6.6}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ $-{1.72}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Carina2 114.1067 −57.9992 ${17.79}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ ${8.69}_{-0.75}^{+0.75}$ ${0.34}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$ ${170.0}_{-9.0}^{+9.0}$ ${477.2}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ ${3.4}_{-0.8}^{+1.2}$ $-{2.44}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$
Carina3 114.63 −57.8997 ${17.22}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${3.75}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ ${0.55}_{-0.18}^{+0.18}$ ${150.0}_{-14.0}^{+14.0}$ ${284.6}_{-3.1}^{+3.4}$ ${5.6}_{-2.1}^{+4.3}$ $-{1.8}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$
Centaurus1 189.585 −40.902 ${20.33}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${2.88}_{-0.4}^{+0.5}$ ${0.4}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${20.0}_{-11.0}^{+11.0}$ $-{1.8}_{-999.0}^{+999.0}$
Cetus2 19.47 −17.42 ${17.1}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${1.9}_{-0.5}^{+1.0}$ $-{1.28}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$
Cetus3 31.3308 −4.27 ${22.0}_{-0.1}^{+0.2}$ ${1.23}_{-0.19}^{+0.42}$ ${0.76}_{-0.08}^{+0.06}$ ${101.0}_{-6.0}^{+5.0}$
Columba1 82.86 −28.03 ${21.3}_{-0.22}^{+0.22}$ ${1.9}_{-0.4}^{+0.5}$ ${153.7}_{-4.8}^{+5.0}$
ComaBerenices 186.7458 23.9042 ${18.2}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${5.63}_{-0.3}^{+0.3}$ ${0.37}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ $-{58.0}_{-4.0}^{+4.0}$ ${98.1}_{-0.9}^{+0.9}$ ${4.6}_{-0.8}^{+0.8}$ $-{2.6}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$
Crater2 177.31 −18.4131 ${20.35}_{-0.02}^{+0.02}$ ${31.2}_{-2.5}^{+2.5}$ ${87.5}_{-0.4}^{+0.4}$ ${2.7}_{-0.3}^{+0.3}$ $-{1.98}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$
DES J0225+0304 36.4267 3.0695 ${16.88}_{-0.05}^{+0.06}$ ${2.68}_{-0.7}^{+1.33}$ ${0.61}_{-0.23}^{+0.14}$ ${31.25}_{-13.39}^{+11.48}$ $-{1.26}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$
Draco 260.0517 57.9153 ${19.4}_{-0.17}^{+0.17}$ ${9.93}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$ ${0.3}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$ ${87.0}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ $-{291.0}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${9.1}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ $-{1.93}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Draco2 238.1983 64.5653 ${16.67}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ ${3.0}_{-0.5}^{+0.7}$ ${0.23}_{-0.15}^{+0.15}$ ${76.0}_{-32.0}^{+22.0}$ $-{342.5}_{-1.2}^{+1.1}$ $-{2.7}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$
Eridanus2 56.0879 −43.5333 ${22.9}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${1.81}_{-0.17}^{+0.17}$ ${0.37}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$ ${82.0}_{-7.0}^{+7.0}$ ${75.6}_{-3.3}^{+3.3}$ ${6.9}_{-0.9}^{+1.2}$ $-{2.38}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$
Eridanus3 35.6896 −52.2836 ${19.7}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${0.29}_{-0.23}^{+0.23}$ ${0.32}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$ ${62.0}_{-11.0}^{+11.0}$
Fornax 39.9971 −34.4492 ${20.84}_{-0.18}^{+0.18}$ ${18.4}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${0.28}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$ ${46.0}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ ${55.3}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${11.7}_{-0.9}^{+0.9}$ $-{0.99}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Grus1 344.1767 −50.1633 ${20.4}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${2.08}_{-0.87}^{+0.87}$ ${0.54}_{-0.26}^{+0.26}$ ${11.0}_{-32.0}^{+32.0}$ $-{140.5}_{-1.6}^{+2.4}$ 9.8 $-{1.42}_{-0.42}^{+0.55}$
Grus2 331.02 −46.44 ${18.62}_{-0.21}^{+0.21}$ ${6.0}_{-0.5}^{+0.9}$ $-{110.0}_{-0.5}^{+0.5}$ $-{2.51}_{-0.11}^{+0.11}$
Hercules 247.7583 12.7917 ${20.6}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${5.99}_{-0.58}^{+0.58}$ ${0.69}_{-0.04}^{+0.04}$ $-{73.0}_{-2.0}^{+2.0}$ ${45.2}_{-1.1}^{+1.1}$ ${3.7}_{-0.9}^{+0.9}$ $-{2.41}_{-0.04}^{+0.04}$
Horologium1 43.8821 −54.1189 ${19.5}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${1.54}_{-0.34}^{+0.34}$ ${0.31}_{-0.16}^{+0.16}$ ${50.0}_{-26.0}^{+26.0}$ ${112.8}_{-2.6}^{+2.5}$ ${4.9}_{-0.9}^{+2.8}$ $-{2.76}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$
Horologium2 49.1338 −50.0181 ${19.46}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${2.83}_{-1.31}^{+1.31}$ ${0.86}_{-0.19}^{+0.19}$ ${130.0}_{-16.0}^{+16.0}$ ${168.7}_{-12.6}^{+12.9}$ −2.1
Hydra2 185.4254 −31.9853 ${20.64}_{-0.16}^{+0.16}$ ${1.5}_{-0.32}^{+0.32}$ ${0.17}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$ ${29.0}_{-25.0}^{+25.0}$ ${303.1}_{-1.4}^{+1.4}$ $-{2.02}_{-0.08}^{+0.08}$
Hydrus1 37.3892 −79.3089 ${17.2}_{-0.04}^{+0.04}$ ${7.42}_{-0.54}^{+0.62}$ ${0.21}_{-0.07}^{+0.15}$ ${97.0}_{-14.0}^{+14.0}$ ${80.4}_{-0.6}^{+0.6}$ ${2.69}_{-0.43}^{+0.51}$ $-{2.52}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$
Indus1 317.2046 −51.1656 ${20.0}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${0.87}_{-0.45}^{+0.45}$ ${0.72}_{-0.29}^{+0.29}$ ${5.0}_{-20.0}^{+20.0}$
Indus2 309.72 −46.16 ${21.65}_{-0.16}^{+0.16}$ ${2.9}_{-1.0}^{+1.1}$
Leo1 152.1171 12.3064 ${22.02}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$ ${3.3}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ ${0.3}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$ ${78.0}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ ${282.5}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${9.2}_{-1.4}^{+1.4}$ $-{1.43}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Leo2 168.37 22.1517 ${21.84}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$ ${2.48}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ ${0.07}_{-0.02}^{+0.02}$ ${43.0}_{-8.0}^{+8.0}$ ${78.0}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${6.6}_{-0.7}^{+0.7}$ $-{1.62}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Leo4 173.2375 −0.5333 ${20.94}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$ ${2.61}_{-0.31}^{+0.31}$ ${0.19}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$ $-{29.0}_{-27.0}^{+27.0}$ ${132.3}_{-1.4}^{+1.4}$ ${3.3}_{-1.7}^{+1.7}$ $-{2.54}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$
Leo5 172.79 2.22 ${21.46}_{-0.16}^{+0.16}$ ${1.0}_{-0.22}^{+0.22}$ ${0.35}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$ $-{65.0}_{-21.0}^{+21.0}$ ${173.3}_{-3.1}^{+3.1}$ ${3.7}_{-1.4}^{+2.3}$ $-{2.0}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$
LeoT 143.7225 17.0514 ${23.1}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${1.25}_{-0.14}^{+0.14}$ ${0.23}_{-0.09}^{+0.09}$ $-{107.0}_{-16.0}^{+16.0}$ ${38.1}_{-2.0}^{+2.0}$ ${7.5}_{-1.6}^{+1.6}$ $-{2.02}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$
Pegasus3 336.0942 5.42 ${21.56}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${1.3}_{-0.4}^{+0.5}$ ${0.46}_{-0.26}^{+0.18}$ ${133.0}_{-17.0}^{+17.0}$ $-{222.9}_{-2.6}^{+2.6}$ ${5.4}_{-2.5}^{+3.0}$ −2.1
Phoenix 27.7762 −44.4447 ${23.06}_{-0.12}^{+0.12}$ ${2.3}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$ ${0.3}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ ${8.0}_{-4.0}^{+4.0}$ $-{21.2}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ ${9.3}_{-0.7}^{+0.7}$ $-{1.49}_{-0.04}^{+0.04}$
Phoenix2 354.9975 −54.4061 ${19.6}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${1.61}_{-0.27}^{+0.27}$ ${0.61}_{-0.15}^{+0.15}$ $-{19.0}_{-14.0}^{+14.0}$ ${32.4}_{-3.8}^{+3.7}$ ${11.0}_{-5.3}^{+9.4}$
Pictor1 70.9475 −50.2831 ${20.3}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${0.66}_{-0.32}^{+0.32}$ ${0.24}_{-0.19}^{+0.19}$ ${72.0}_{-10.0}^{+10.0}$
Pictor2 101.18 −59.8969 ${18.3}_{-0.15}^{+0.12}$ ${3.8}_{-1.0}^{+1.5}$ ${0.13}_{-0.13}^{+0.22}$ ${14.0}_{-66.0}^{+60.0}$ $-{1.8}_{-0.3}^{+0.3}$
Pisces2 344.6292 5.9525 ${21.31}_{-0.17}^{+0.17}$ ${1.22}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${0.4}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${99.0}_{-13.0}^{+13.0}$ $-{226.5}_{-2.7}^{+2.7}$ ${5.4}_{-2.4}^{+3.6}$ $-{2.45}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$
Reticulum2 53.9254 −54.0492 ${17.4}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${5.59}_{-0.21}^{+0.21}$ ${0.56}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ ${69.0}_{-2.0}^{+2.0}$ ${64.7}_{-0.8}^{+1.3}$ ${3.22}_{-0.49}^{+1.64}$ $-{2.46}_{-0.1}^{+0.09}$
Reticulum3 56.36 −60.45 ${19.81}_{-0.31}^{+0.31}$ ${2.4}_{-0.8}^{+0.9}$ ${274.2}_{-7.4}^{+7.5}$
Sagittarius2 298.1688 −22.0681 ${19.32}_{-0.02}^{+0.03}$ ${1.7}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ ${0.06}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$ ${103.0}_{-17.0}^{+28.0}$ $-{177.3}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ ${2.7}_{-1.0}^{+1.3}$ $-{2.28}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$
Sculptor 15.0392 −33.7092 ${19.67}_{-0.14}^{+0.14}$ ${12.33}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ ${0.37}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$ ${94.0}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ ${111.4}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${9.2}_{-1.4}^{+1.4}$ $-{1.68}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Segue1 151.7667 16.0819 ${16.8}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${3.95}_{-0.48}^{+0.48}$ ${0.34}_{-0.11}^{+0.11}$ ${75.0}_{-16.0}^{+16.0}$ ${208.5}_{-0.9}^{+0.9}$ ${3.9}_{-0.8}^{+0.8}$ $-{2.72}_{-0.4}^{+0.4}$
Segue2 34.8167 20.1753 ${17.7}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${3.64}_{-0.29}^{+0.29}$ ${0.21}_{-0.07}^{+0.07}$ ${166.0}_{-15.0}^{+15.0}$ $-{39.2}_{-2.5}^{+2.5}$ ${3.4}_{-1.2}^{+2.5}$ $-{2.22}_{-0.13}^{+0.13}$
Sextans1 153.2625 −1.6147 ${19.67}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${27.8}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ ${0.35}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ ${56.0}_{-5.0}^{+5.0}$ ${224.2}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${7.9}_{-1.3}^{+1.3}$ $-{1.93}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Triangulum2 33.3225 36.1783 ${17.4}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${3.9}_{-0.9}^{+1.1}$ ${0.21}_{-0.21}^{+0.17}$ ${56.0}_{-24.0}^{+16.0}$ $-{381.7}_{-1.1}^{+1.1}$ $-{2.24}_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$
Tucana2 342.9796 −58.5689 ${18.8}_{-0.2}^{+0.2}$ ${9.83}_{-1.11}^{+1.66}$ ${0.39}_{-0.2}^{+0.1}$ ${107.0}_{-18.0}^{+18.0}$ $-{129.1}_{-3.5}^{+3.5}$ ${8.6}_{-2.7}^{+4.4}$ $-{2.23}_{-0.12}^{+0.18}$
Tucana3 359.15 −59.6 ${17.01}_{-0.16}^{+0.16}$ ${6.0}_{-0.6}^{+0.8}$ $-{102.3}_{-2.4}^{+2.4}$ ${0.1}_{-0.1}^{+0.7}$ $-{2.42}_{-0.08}^{+0.07}$
Tucana4 0.73 −60.85 ${18.41}_{-0.19}^{+0.19}$ ${9.3}_{-0.9}^{+1.4}$ ${0.39}_{-0.1}^{+0.07}$ ${27.0}_{-8.0}^{+9.0}$ ${15.9}_{-1.7}^{+1.8}$ ${4.3}_{-1.0}^{+1.7}$ $-{2.49}_{-0.16}^{+0.15}$
Tucana5 354.35 −63.27 ${18.71}_{-0.34}^{+0.34}$ ${2.1}_{-0.4}^{+0.6}$ ${0.51}_{-0.18}^{+0.09}$ ${29.0}_{-11.0}^{+11.0}$ $-{36.3}_{-2.2}^{+2.5}$ $-{2.17}_{-0.23}^{+0.23}$
UrsaMajor1 158.72 51.92 ${19.93}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${8.34}_{-0.34}^{+0.34}$ ${0.57}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ ${67.0}_{-2.0}^{+2.0}$ $-{55.3}_{-1.4}^{+1.4}$ ${7.6}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ $-{2.18}_{-0.04}^{+0.04}$
UrsaMajor2 132.875 63.13 ${17.5}_{-0.3}^{+0.3}$ ${13.95}_{-0.46}^{+0.46}$ ${0.56}_{-0.03}^{+0.03}$ $-{77.0}_{-2.0}^{+2.0}$ $-{116.5}_{-1.9}^{+1.9}$ ${6.7}_{-1.4}^{+1.4}$ $-{2.47}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$
UrsaMinor 227.2854 67.2225 ${19.4}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${17.32}_{-0.11}^{+0.11}$ ${0.55}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$ ${50.0}_{-1.0}^{+1.0}$ $-{246.9}_{-0.1}^{+0.1}$ ${9.5}_{-1.2}^{+1.2}$ $-{2.13}_{-0.01}^{+0.01}$
Virgo1 180.0379 0.681 ${19.8}_{-0.1}^{+0.2}$ ${1.76}_{-0.4}^{+0.49}$ ${0.59}_{-0.14}^{+0.12}$ ${62.0}_{-13.0}^{+8.0}$
Willman1 162.3375 51.05 ${17.9}_{-0.4}^{+0.4}$ ${2.53}_{-0.22}^{+0.22}$ ${0.47}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$ ${74.0}_{-4.0}^{+4.0}$ $-{12.3}_{-2.5}^{+2.5}$ ${4.3}_{-1.3}^{+2.3}$ −2.1

Note. Objects in italics are those satellites for which we are unable to derive proper motions.

Download table as:  ASCIITypeset images: 1 2

2.2. Selection of Stars from Gaia

In this era of Gaia (Gaia Collaboration et al. 2016), any star that is bright enough to be detected by the spacecraft has information available regarding its spatial position (ξ, η)i, color and magnitude ${(G,{BP}-{RP})}_{i}$, and proper motion ${({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta })}_{i}$. Note that (ξ, η)i are the coordinates of star i projected on a tangent plane to the celestial sphere, and these are a function of the R.A. and decl. (α, δ)i as measured by Gaia.

For every satellite listed in Table 1, we consider all stellar sources in Gaia DR2 (Gaia Collaboration et al. 2018b) that are within 2° of the center of the galaxy. In 53 out of the 59 cases, this area corresponds to a much larger area than subtended by the dwarf itself (i.e., hundreds or more times its half-light radius). However, for six of the larger (in terms of subtended area) satellites, we consider sources within 4–8 degrees from their centers (Antlia 2, Carina, Crater 2, Fornax, Sextans 1, and Ursa Minor).

As the color–magnitude distribution of sources is critical to our method, we require the $G,{BP},{RP}$ photometry to be reliable, and therefore follow Lindegren et al. (2018; their Equation (C.2)) to consider only stars that meet the following criterion:

Equation (1)

where E is the flux excess factor, as defined in Lindegren et al. (2018). We use dereddened Gaia DR2 stellar magnitudes in our analysis, using the extinction maps of Schlegel et al. (1998) and following the definition of the relevant extinction coefficients described in Equation (1) and Table 1 of Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018a).

We only consider stars with full five-parameter astrometric solutions and high-quality astrometry as defined via the renormalized unit-weighted error (ruwe; see Lindegren et al. 2018 and discussion in the Gaia DR2 Documentation Release 1.2). Inspection of the distribution of ruwe for sources that otherwise meet our selection criteria motivated us to adopt ruwe < 1.3.

Finally, only stars with parallaxes that are consistent with the distance to the satellite are included. Specifically, the 3σ parallax range measured by Gaia DR2 must overlap the 3σ parallax range implied by the distance modulus of the dwarf, as given in Table 1. We correct for the global zero-point of the parallax in Gaia DR2 of −0.029 mas (Lindegren et al. 2018).

2.3. Radial Velocity Data

Member stars in Milky Way dwarf galaxies are generally too faint to have been observed with the Gaia/RVS. Therefore, unlike photometry and proper motions, radial velocities are only available for the stars in dwarf galaxies that were specifically targeted for followed-up spectroscopy from ground-based observatories. There is a wealth of such studies in the literature; a comprehensive compilation of the known radial velocity publications for the satellites in this paper is given in Table 2 (see also Table 1 of Fritz et al. 2018). For all except the brightest objects, these references are intended to be a complete list of published radial velocity measurements for these satellites, and any omissions are unintentional.4 For the brightest ("classical") objects—Fornax, Ursa Minor, Carina, Sextans 1, Draco, Sculptor, Leo I, and Leo 2—the references are not comprehensive. These bright dwarfs typically have hundreds to thousands of stars with radial velocity information, compared to typically tens to hundreds of stars in the fainter systems.

Table 2.  Radial Velocity Data for All the Milky Way Satellites under Consideration

Galaxy References Galaxy References
Antlia2 Torrealba et al. (2019) Leo1 Mateo et al. (2008)
Aquarius2 Torrealba et al. (2016) Leo2 Spencer et al. (2017)
Bootes1 Muñoz et al. (2006) Leo4 Simon & Geha (2007)
  Martin et al. (2007) Leo5 Walker et al. (2009a)
  Norris et al. (2008)   Collins et al. (2017)
  Norris et al. (2010b) LeoT Simon & Geha (2007)
  Koposov et al. (2011) Pegasus3 Kim et al. (2016)
Bootes2 Koch et al. (2009) Phoenix Kacharov et al. (2017)
Bootes4 −– Phoenix2 Fritz et al. (2019)
CanesVenatici2 Simon & Geha (2007) Pictor1
CanesVenatici2 Martin et al. (2007) Pictor2
  Simon & Geha (2007) Pisces2 Kirby et al. (2015)
Carina Walker et al. (2009b) Reticulum 2 Koposov et al. (2015)
Carina2 Li et al. (2018b)   Simon et al. (2015)
Carina3 Li et al. (2018b)   Walker et al. (2015a)
Centaurus1 Reticulum3 Fritz et al. (2019)
Cetus2 Sagittarius2 Longeard et al. (2020a, 2020b)
Cetus3 Sculptor Walker et al. (2009b)
Columba1 Fritz et al. (2019) Segue1 Simon et al. (2011)
ComaBerenices Simon & Geha (2007)   Norris et al. (2010b)
Crater2 Caldwell et al. (2017)   Geha et al. (2009)
DES J0225+0304 Segue2 Kirby et al. (2013)
Draco Walker et al. (2015b) Sextans Walker et al. (2009b)
Draco2 Longeard et al. (2018) Triangulum2 Kirby et al. (2015)
  Martin et al. (2016a)   Martin et al. (2016b)
Eridanus2 Li et al. (2017)   Kirby et al. (2017)
Eridanus3 Tucana2 Walker et al. (2016)
Fornax Walker et al. (2009b)   Chiti et al. (2018)
Grus1 Walker et al. (2016) Tucana3 Simon et al. (2017)
Grus2 Simon et al. (2020)   Li et al. (2018a)
Hercules Simon & Geha (2007) Tucana4 Simon et al. (2020)
  Adén et al. (2009) Tucana5 Simon et al. (2020)
  Deason et al. (2012a) UrsaMajor1 Martin et al. (2007)
Horologium1 Koposov et al. (2015)   Simon & Geha (2007)
  Nagasawa et al. (2018) UrsaMajor2 Martin et al. (2007)
Horologium2 Fritz et al. (2019)   Simon & Geha (2007)
Hydra2 Kirby et al. (2015) UrsaMinor Spencer et al. (2018)
Hydrus1 Koposov et al. (2018) Virgo1
Indus1 Willman1 Martin et al. (2007)
Indus2   Willman et al. (2011)

Note. For Triangulum 2, only velocities from Kirby et al. (2017) were used. References for the "classical" satellites—Fornax, Ursa Minor, Carina, Sextans 1, Draco, Sculptor, Leo I, and Leo 2—are not complete.

Download table as:  ASCIITypeset image

For each paper in Table 2, we have cross-matched the stars with measured radial velocities with Gaia DR2. For those papers listed in Table 2 that give multiple measurements per star, we have taken the weighted mean velocity for each star. For those satellites that have been observed by multiple groups, we have combined data sets, and taken the weighted mean velocities of any stars in common.

3. Methodology

3.1. Overview

In general, the membership of a star in a dwarf galaxy can be judged by the position of the star (is the star near the dwarf?), by the color or metallicity of the star (does the star appear to have color or metallicity properties that are consistent with the stellar populations of the dwarf?), and by the dynamics of the star (is the motion of the star consistent with the motion of the rest of the dwarf?). The latter can be broken up into both a proper motion component and a radial velocity component. All approaches to the derivation of the systemic proper motion of satellites consider some weighted combination of these criteria.

One of the ultimate science goals of our analysis is to develop comprehensive membership lists for the faint Milky Way satellites (these will be discussed in forthcoming contributions). As such, we favor approaches in the derivation of the systemic proper motions that simultaneously allow us to calculate stellar membership probabilities (as opposed to cuts, which imply either that a star is definitely a member or definitely not a member). Furthermore, we want to incorporate as much information as is available in the data, while being aware that some types of data (i.e., radial velocities) are only available for a subset of stars. We are also aware that the uncertainties on some important parameters (e.g., the projected size of the satellite) are quite uncertain in some cases.

Our adopted approach is inspired by Pace & Li (2019). As described in that paper, for any star in Gaia, it is either a member of the Milky Way satellite being studied, or it is a member of the Milky Way foreground or background. We can therefore define the total likelyhood ${ \mathcal L }$ for a star as

Equation (2)

where ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{sat}}$ and ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{MW}}$ are the likelihoods for the satellite and Milky Way foreground or background, respectively, and fsat is the fraction of stars in the satellite. ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{sat}}$ can be broken down as

Equation (3)

where ${{ \mathcal L }}_{s},{{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{CM}}$ and ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{PM}}$ are the likelihoods from the spatial information, color–magnitude information, and proper motion information, respectively. ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{MW}}$ can similarly be broken down into the product of its three constituent likelihoods.

Within a Bayesian framework, the probability of the data, D, given a set of model parameters, θ, is given by

Equation (4)

P(θ) is our prior on the model parameters. We aim to determine the set of model parameters that maximizes $P\left(D| \theta \right)$.

If it were the case that all stars in our sample also had radial velocity information, then the radial velocity information could be incorporated in Equation (4) via the incorporation of a fourth term, ${{ \mathcal L }}_{\mathrm{RV}}$, in Equation (3). However, only a tiny fraction of our data has radial velocity information. As such, only the spatial, color–magnitude, and proper motion information are incorporated into Equation (4) via the likelihood, ${ \mathcal L }$. The radial velocity data, where it exists, will be incorporated into Equation (4) via the prior, P(θ).

We note that once all of the relevant likelihoods have been calculated, the probability that a star is a member of the satellite is given by

Equation (5)

Within this framework, the problem of obtaining systemic proper motions for satellites (and the related problem of identifying member stars within satellites) becomes one of defining the appropriate likelihood functions for the satellite and the background. Here, we are conscious of two driving considerations. The first is that many of the satellites are intrinsically faint, and as such, there are significant uncertainties on their basic parameters (especially distance). Thus, any model of their structural and color–magnitude properties should seek to incorporate these uncertainties. The second consideration is that the structure of the Milky Way foreground and background is, to put it mildly, immensely complex. While variations in the global structure as a function of position can potentially be parameterized (e.g., see Pace & Li 2019), variations on a smaller scale that are due to known or unknown structures or substructures are especially problematic for proper motion analyses. Thus, we make absolutely no attempt to construct a parameterized model of the foreground or background. Instead, an empirical model based entirely on the data in hand is constructed with no unknown parameters.

Our model parameters, θ, therefore consist only of the unknown systematic proper motion components, ${({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta })}_{\mathrm{sat}}$, in addition to fsat introduced in Equation (2). This parameter space is explored using emcee (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013, 2019). We now discuss our likelihood models for each term in Equation (3), and the form of our adopted prior, P(θ).

3.2. Spatial Distribution

3.2.1. Satellite

The spatial likelihood function for a star to be a member of a dwarf galaxy is determined from the structural parameterization of the host galaxy, as estimated from its resolved stellar distribution. These are generally adequately described by an exponential function, adopted here for simplicity. The necessary parameters to (completely) describe the relevant 2D exponential distributions are given in Table 1.

To account for (large) uncertainties, we construct a 2D lookup map for the satellite spatial likelihood. This is made by coadding a thousand realizations of the dwarf galaxy stellar density distribution, where each realization uses parameters drawn from Gaussian distributions, centered on the reported values for rh, e, and θ in Table 1. The standard deviation is set by the reported uncertainties on each parameter. Systems that do not have reported values of ellipticity or position angle are assumed to be circular. We note that the centers of these satellites are assumed to be fixed, although a few of the faintest satellites have relatively large uncertainties in their positions. However, these satellites also have large uncertainties in their other structural parameters, such that inclusion of the uncertainties in their positions does not change their spatial likelihood functions significantly, and does not affect the systemic proper motions that are calculated.

An example of the resulting likelihood function is shown in the left panel of Figure 2 for DES J0225+0304. For comparison, the right panel shows what the spatial likelihood function would look like if the uncertainties had not been considered. DES J0225+0304 has relatively poorly defined structural parameters; for systems with well-measured structural parameters, the distinction between the two panels becomes negligible.

Figure 2.

Figure 2. Left panel: the spatial likelihood map for DES J0225+0304, shown with logarithmic scaling. Right panel: same as left panel (with identical scaling), but without the uncertainties in the structural parameters being taken into account. For reference, the black ellipses in each panel correspond to 1 and 3 half-light radii from the center of the satellite.

Standard image High-resolution image

3.2.2. Foreground or Background

The Milky Way contamination is assumed to be spatially uniform over the area subtended by the dwarf. For satellites at low Galactic latitude, there is a gradient due to the disk. Further, there is also the possibility of small substructures in the (projected) vicinity of the dwarfs. However, the assumption of uniformity appears to be reasonable given the results we obtain, especially the minimal amounts of foreground contamination that we measure (see discussion in Section 4.2.1).

3.3. Color–Magnitude Distribution

3.3.1. Satellite

The majority of the satellites under consideration are dominated by relatively old, metal-poor stellar populations. Mean metallicities (estimated using a variety of techniques) exist for most of them, and so it is relatively easy to construct a simple model of the expected color–magnitude likelihood function for the satellite.

In the first instance, we adopt a 12 Gyr Padova isochrone (Girardi et al. 2002) in the Gaia photometric bands using the filter definitions from Weiler (2018). For each dwarf satellite, the mean metallicity in Table 1 is adopted, and the isochrone shifted to the appropriate distance. Post-helium flash stars are not considered. At every magnitude, the stellar population is modeled as a Gaussian function with an intrinsic full width at half maximum of 0.1 mag in color, centered on the color of the isochrone. This is combined with the mean uncertainty in color at each magnitude for the stars under consideration. For a few of the dwarfs (Carina, Fornax, Leo 1, Leo 2, and Phoenix), a younger age is adopted for the isochrone to better match the color of the red giant branch stars.

In a similar way to the spatial distribution, a 2D lookup map is constructed for the color–magnitude likelihood function using the above methodology (with stars brighter than the tip of the red giant branch having zero likelihood of being a member). However, we coadd a thousand realizations, where the isochrone is moved to a distance selected from a Gaussian distribution centered on the recorded distance modulus of the dwarf, with a standard deviation equal to the uncertainty on the distance modulus. In this way, the (sometimes significant) distance uncertainties on the ultrafaint dwarf galaxies are taken into account, which otherwise makes a single realization of color–magnitude space unsatisfactory.

The left panel of Figure 3 shows an example of the resulting satellite likelihood model for color–magnitude space for the case of DES J0225+0304. We only consider stars defined within our likelihood grid; $-0.5\lt ({BP}-{RP})\lt 2.5$ and $22\lt G\lt {G}_{\mathrm{TRGB}}+5{\sigma }_{{(m-M)}_{o}}$, where ${\sigma }_{{(m-M)}_{o}}$ is the uncertainty in the distance modulus, given in Table 1.

Figure 3.

Figure 3. Left panel: the color–magnitude likelihood map for DES J0225+0304, shown with linear scaling. Right panel: the color–magnitude likelihood map for the Milky Way contamination in the field of DES J0225+0304, also with linear scaling.

Standard image High-resolution image

Padova isochrones for metallicities below [Fe/H] = −2.19 dex were not available. As such, we adopted this, the most metal-poor isochrone, for any galaxy that was more metal-poor than this limit. This is acceptable as the change in color at these low metallicities is very small. For any satellites that lack a metallicity estimate, $\langle [\mathrm{Fe}/{\rm{H}}]\rangle =-2$ was adopted. We note that it would also be possible to draw the metallicity from a Gaussian function (also for age); however, this does not have a significant impact on our the results. Only the red giant branch and upper main sequence are considered when constructing these models, and we ignore stars on the horizontal branch and asymptotic giant branch. Thus, by construction, a star lying on an isochrone at any magnitude is considered a likely member of the dwarf satellite. It is clearly possible to develop a more sophisticated model, e.g., taking into account additional stellar populations and the relative number of sources as a function of magnitude or stellar evolutionary phase; however, we did not find this to be necessary for the task in hand.

3.3.2. Foreground or Background

For the color–magnitude likelihood function of the Milky Way contamination, we assume that the contamination at the position of the satellite has the same statistical properties as the Milky Way population near the satellite. In practice, a hole is excised in the Gaia DR2 catalog for each satellite corresponding to five half-light radii centered on the satellite. A 2D lookup map of the color–magnitude distribution for all remaining stars is constructed, where each star is mapped as a bivariate Gaussian, with standard deviations corresponding to the recorded uncertainties in color and magnitude. Suitably normalized, this 2D map of the background becomes our likelihood function. The right panel of Figure 3 shows an example of the Milky Way likelihood function for the color–magnitude space of DES J0225+0304.

3.4. Proper Motion Distribution

3.4.1. Satellite

For the likelihood of the proper motion of the satellite, all members are assumed to share the same systemic proper motion, ${\left({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta }\right)}_{\mathrm{sat}}$. The spread in recorded proper motion values for stars in each satellite is assumed to be entirely due to measurement errors because these dominate over the expected intrinsic spread in proper motions for each satellite. Thus, the satellite proper motion likelihood function is described by a bivariate Gaussian with a covariance matrix defined by the reported proper motion uncertainties and their correlation for each star under consideration.

3.4.2. Foreground or Background

A 2D lookup map for the Milky Way proper motion likelihood function is constructed using the same approach as for the Milky Way CMD likelihood function (above). Specifically, we excise the same area as before and construct a proper motion map, where each remaining star is a bivariate Gaussian, using the reported stellar proper motion uncertainties and their correlation to define the relevant covariance matrices. Figure 4 shows an example of the Milky Way proper motion likelihood function for the case of DES J0225+0304. Note that we only consider stars in the likelihood grid with an absolute proper motion lower than or equal to 10 mas yr−1 in each direction. For the closest satellites in our sample, this corresponds to tangential velocities of around 1000 km s−1, ensuring that the possible proper motion space for the satellite is fully explored.

Figure 4.

Figure 4. The proper motion likelihood map for the Milky Way contamination in the field of DES J0225+0304, shown with logarithmic scaling.

Standard image High-resolution image

3.5. Priors on the Likelihood and Incorporation of Radial Velocity Data

There are three unknown parameters in our model: fsat (the fraction of stars belonging to the satellite), and the two components of the systemic proper motion of the satellite, ${\left({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta }\right)}_{\mathrm{sat}}$. For the former, we adopt a uniform prior between 0 and 1.

Two priors are selected on the systemic proper motions:

  • 1.  
    Prior A: The first prior assumes that the dispersion in the set of tangential velocities of the satellites is somewhat similar to the dispersion in the radial velocities of known halo-tracer populations (including the satellites). The radial velocity dispersion profile of the outer Galaxy has been quantified by numerous authors (e.g., Deason et al. 2012b; Bhattacharjee et al. 2014) and is reasonably characterized as a roughly constant velocity dispersion at σr  ≃  100 km s−1. Therefore, we adopt a Gaussian prior on the 2D proper motion, such that it is centered on the equivalent of a Galactocentric velocity of zero (after the reflex motion of the Sun has been taken into account) and has a dispersion equivalent to 100 km s−1 at the distance of the satellite. This prior is not particularly restrictive, as its primary purpose is to inhibit unphysically high tangential velocities; for example, velocities greatly in excess of the escape velocity of the Galaxy. However, it does have the effect of creating an "envelope" of ∼100 km s−1 in the maximum uncertainties on the systemic proper motions that we derive, where this value is driven by the prior, not the data. In addition, we note that for the three most distant galaxies in our sample—Eridanus 2, Phoenix, and Leo T—it is not clear if these objects should trace the tangential velocity dispersion of the halo of the Milky Way. As such, for these three galaxies, we provide estimates with and without this prior.
  • 2.  
    Prior B: For satellites with radial velocity follow-up of individual stars, we have additional information to assess whether the stars are members of the satellite. For those stars that appear likely members, we modify the above prior to favor values of the systemic proper motion that will increase the probability of those stars being considered members.We search for stars with radial velocities that are within 2σ of the mean radial velocity of the satellite. For the satellites in Table 1, where the mean radial velocities are known but the radial velocity dispersions are unknown, we assume σv = 5 km s−1. Simultaneously, a 2σ cut around the isochrone in the color–magnitude likelihood is adopted, as well as a cut inside two half-light radii in the spatial likelihood map.For stars that satisfy these three criteria (radial velocity likelihood, CMD likelihood, and spatial likelihood), the weighted mean of their proper motions is calculated. One iteration of sigma-clipping is performed to remove any obviously deviant proper motions. This is in line with the approach taken by many authors to calculate the proper motions of satellites from radial velocity data (e.g., Fritz et al. 2018; Simon et al. 2020). The resulting mean and uncertainities are interpreted as a bivariate Gaussian that we dub "the velocity prior." This velocity prior is multiplied into Prior A to create Prior B. This will heavily favor results that are consistent with stars that appear to be members in all of their other characteristics, including radial velocities, while still maintaining consistency with our original prior. Importantly, stars without radial velocities still contribute to the selection of the preferred model through the likelihood function, ensuring that the full Gaia data set is still used.

4. Results

For each satellite listed in Table 1, we construct the spatial, color–magnitude, and proper motion likelihood maps as described in Section 3 and explore the parameter space using emcee for those values of fsat and ${\left({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta }\right)}_{\mathrm{sat}}$ that maximize the probability of the data. Table 3 lists the median values and 14th and 86th percentiles for the three parameters in our model, fsat and ${\left({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta }\right)}_{\mathrm{sat}}$, under the assumptions of our two different priors (Prior A—Columns 2, 3, and 4; Prior B—Columns 5, 6, and 7) for 54 of the satellites listed in Table 1. We are unable to determine systemic proper motions from Gaia DR2 for Bootes 4, Cetus 3, Indus 2, Pegasus 3, and Virgo 1, and we argue in Section 4.4 that this is due to a lack of any member stars with reliable data in Gaia DR2. The estimates for Cetus 2, Pictor 2, and Leo T are derived using looser cuts on the Gaia data in order to identify more member stars, and these systems are also discussed in more detail in Section 4.4.

Table 3.  Median, 14th, and 86th Percentiles of the Probability Density Functions for Our Three Unknown Parameters, for 54 out of 59 of the Satellites in Our Sample

  Prior A Prior B
Galaxy fsat ${\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta $ (mas yr−1) ${\mu }_{\delta }$ (mas yr−1) fsat ${\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta $ (mas yr−1) ${\mu }_{\delta }$ (mas yr−1)
Antlia2 0.00007 ± 0.00001 −0.03 ± 0.05 0.05 ± 0.06 0.00007 ± 0.00001 −0.05 ± 0.04 ${0.04}_{-0.05}^{+0.04}$
Aquarius2 ${0.0007}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ 0.03 ± 0.16 −0.24 ± 0.16 ${0.0007}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ −0.0 ± 0.16 $-{0.2}_{-0.15}^{+0.16}$
Bootes1 0.007 ± 0.001 −0.46 ± 0.05 −1.06 ± 0.04 0.007 ± 0.001 −0.47 ± 0.04 −1.07 ± 0.03
Bootes2 ${0.0011}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ $-{2.09}_{-0.23}^{+0.25}$ $-{0.63}_{-0.17}^{+0.18}$ ${0.0011}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ −2.25 ± 0.21 −0.63 ± 0.15
CanesVenatici1 0.017 ± 0.002 −0.23 ± 0.06 −0.06 ± 0.04 0.017 ± 0.002 −0.26 ± 0.05 −0.06 ± 0.03
CanesVenatici2 0.002 ± 0.001 $-{0.28}_{-0.11}^{+0.12}$ −0.34 ± 0.11 0.002 ± 0.001 −0.34 ± 0.11 −0.35 ± 0.1
Carina 0.0066 ± 0.0002 0.48 ± 0.01 0.13 ± 0.01 0.0066 ± 0.0002 0.48 ± 0.01 0.13 ± 0.01
Carina2 0.0003 ± 0.0001 1.83 ± 0.03 0.11 ± 0.03 0.0003 ± 0.0001 1.84 ± 0.03 0.11 ± 0.03
Carina3 ${0.0001}_{-0.00004}^{+0.00005}$ ${2.95}_{-1.4}^{+0.12}$ ${1.42}_{-1.27}^{+0.14}$ ${0.00011}_{-0.00004}^{+0.00005}$ 2.99 ± 0.08 ${1.49}_{-0.09}^{+0.1}$
Centaurus1 ${0.00011}_{-0.00004}^{+0.00005}$ −0.13 ± 0.13 −0.17 ± 0.14
Cetus2 ${0.0007}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ ${2.24}_{-1.05}^{+0.63}$ ${0.37}_{-0.66}^{+0.16}$
Columba1 ${0.0004}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ 0.2 ± 0.09 −0.1 ± 0.1 ${0.0004}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ 0.21 ± 0.09 $-{0.14}_{-0.09}^{+0.1}$
ComaBerenices 0.004 ± 0.001 0.49 ± 0.05 −1.65 ± 0.04 0.004 ± 0.001 0.5 ± 0.05 −1.67 ± 0.04
Crater2 0.003 ± 0.0003 −0.14 ± 0.05 −0.08 ± 0.03 0.0029 ± 0.0003 −0.17 ± 0.04 −0.09 ± 0.02
DES J0225+0304 ${0.0003}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ ${1.31}_{-0.76}^{+0.83}$ $-{1.13}_{-0.97}^{+0.85}$
Draco 0.046 ± 0.002 −0.01 ± 0.01 −0.14 ± 0.01 ${0.047}_{-0.001}^{+0.002}$ −0.01 ± 0.01 −0.14 ± 0.01
Draco2 0.0014 ± 0.0004 ${1.02}_{-0.22}^{+0.23}$ ${0.99}_{-0.24}^{+0.23}$ 0.0014 ± 0.0004 1.06 ± 0.17 0.96 ± 0.18
Eridanus2 0.003 ± 0.001 0.1 ± 0.05 −0.06 ± 0.05 0.003 ± 0.001 0.11 ± 0.05 −0.06 ± 0.05
Eridanus3 ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ 0.73 ± 0.18 −0.35 ± 0.17
Fornax 0.233 ± 0.002 0.380 ± 0.003 −0.416 ± 0.004 0.234 ± 0.002 0.380 ± 0.002 $-{0.416}_{-0.003}^{+0.004}$
Grus1 0.0005 ± 0.0002 $-{0.03}_{-0.12}^{+0.13}$ −0.39 ± 0.14 0.0005 ± 0.0002 −0.05 ± 0.12 −0.41 ± 0.14
Grus2 0.0009 ± 0.0003 ${0.45}_{-0.08}^{+0.09}$ $-{1.45}_{-0.19}^{+0.13}$ 0.0008 ± 0.0003 0.48 ± 0.06 $-{1.41}_{-0.09}^{+0.08}$
Hercules ${0.0006}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ −0.15 ± 0.09 −0.39 ± 0.07 ${0.0006}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ −0.13 ± 0.07 −0.39 ± 0.06
Horologium1 ${0.0016}_{-0.0004}^{+0.0005}$ 0.91 ± 0.07 −0.55 ± 0.06 ${0.0016}_{-0.0004}^{+0.0005}$ 0.87 ± 0.05 −0.58 ± 0.05
Horologium2 ${0.0002}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ ${0.59}_{-0.25}^{+0.24}$ −0.16 ± 0.25 ${0.0003}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ ${0.89}_{-0.23}^{+0.22}$ −0.21 ± 0.25
Hydra2 0.0003 ± 0.0001 −0.27 ± 0.14 $-{0.04}_{-0.12}^{+0.13}$ 0.0003 ± 0.0001 −0.26 ± 0.13 −0.05 ± 0.12
Hydrus1 0.0017 ± 0.0003 ${3.79}_{-0.04}^{+0.03}$ $-{1.53}_{-0.03}^{+0.04}$ 0.0017 ± 0.0003 3.77 ± 0.03 −1.55 ± 0.03
Indus1 ${0.0001}_{-0.00005}^{+0.00008}$ ${0.21}_{-0.19}^{+0.16}$ $-{0.72}_{-0.19}^{+0.31}$
Leo1 0.008 ± 0.002 −0.05 ± 0.08 −0.18 ± 0.08 0.008 ± 0.002 −0.06 ± 0.07 −0.18 ± 0.08
Leo2 ${0.024}_{-0.002}^{+0.003}$ −0.11 ± 0.06 −0.18 ± 0.06 ${0.024}_{-0.002}^{+0.003}$ −0.12 ± 0.06 −0.17 ± 0.06
Leo4 ${0.0004}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ −0.17 ± 0.13 −0.26 ± 0.13 ${0.0004}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ −0.2 ± 0.13 −0.26 ± 0.12
Leo5 ${0.0005}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ −0.1 ± 0.11 −0.21 ± 0.1 ${0.0005}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ $-{0.11}_{-0.11}^{+0.1}$ −0.21 ± 0.1
LeoT 0.002 ± 0.001 −0.01 ± 0.05 −0.11 ± 0.05 0.002 ± 0.001 −0.01 ± 0.05 −0.11 ± 0.05
Phoenix 0.009 ± 0.002 0.08 ± 0.05 −0.08 ± 0.05 0.009 ± 0.002 0.08 ± 0.05 −0.08 ± 0.05
Phoenix2 ${0.0006}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ 0.41 ± 0.09 −1.0 ± 0.11 ${0.0006}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ ${0.44}_{-0.07}^{+0.08}$ −1.03 ± 0.09
Pictor1 0.0005 ± 0.0002 0.18 ± 0.13 0.0 ± 0.15
Pictor2 ${0.00008}_{-0.00005}^{+0.00007}$ ${1.18}_{-0.47}^{+0.14}$ ${1.15}_{-0.75}^{+0.13}$
Pisces2 ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ ${0.08}_{-0.11}^{+0.12}$ −0.22 ± 0.11 ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ 0.07 ± 0.11 −0.26 ± 0.11
Reticulum2 0.004 ± 0.001 2.38 ± 0.04 −1.3 ± 0.04 0.004 ± 0.001 2.39 ± 0.03 −1.3 ± 0.03
Reticulum3 ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ ${0.2}_{-0.23}^{+0.24}$ −0.09 ± 0.22 ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ 0.05 ± 0.21 −0.09 ± 0.2
Sagittarius2 ${0.00011}_{-0.00003}^{+0.00004}$ −0.62 ± 0.08 −0.94 ± 0.05 ${0.00011}_{-0.00003}^{+0.00004}$ −0.65 ± 0.07 −0.96 ± 0.04
Sculptor 0.315 ± 0.005 0.082 ± 0.005 −0.133 ± 0.005 0.315 ± 0.005 0.081 ± 0.005 −0.136 ± 0.004
Segue1 ${0.0011}_{-0.0005}^{+0.0006}$ $-{1.67}_{-0.37}^{+0.46}$ $-{3.43}_{-0.33}^{+0.44}$ ${0.0011}_{-0.0005}^{+0.0006}$ $-{1.59}_{-0.22}^{+0.23}$ $-{3.5}_{-0.21}^{+0.2}$
Segue2 ${0.0007}_{-0.0003}^{+0.0004}$ ${1.6}_{-0.2}^{+0.19}$ 0.05 ± 0.13 0.0006 ± 0.0003 ${1.68}_{-0.13}^{+0.12}$ 0.12 ± 0.08
Sextans1 0.0116 ± 0.0005 −0.43 ± 0.02 0.09 ± 0.02 0.0116 ± 0.0005 −0.44 ± 0.02 0.09 ± 0.02
Triangulum2 ${0.00013}_{-0.00007}^{+0.00010}$ ${0.76}_{-0.18}^{+0.23}$ ${0.33}_{-0.27}^{+0.15}$ ${0.00013}_{-0.00007}^{+0.00010}$ ${0.62}_{-0.15}^{+0.13}$ 0.42 ± 0.11
Tucana2 0.0011 ± 0.0003 0.92 ± 0.06 −1.14 ± 0.08 0.0011 ± 0.0003 0.94 ± 0.05 −1.22 ± 0.06
Tucana3 0.003 ± 0.001 −0.03 ± 0.04 −1.66 ± 0.04 0.003 ± 0.001 −0.02 ± 0.03 −1.67 ± 0.03
Tucana4 ${0.0004}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ ${0.68}_{-0.29}^{+0.62}$ $-{1.36}_{-0.22}^{+0.44}$ ${0.0004}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ ${0.63}_{-0.12}^{+0.13}$ $-{1.54}_{-0.11}^{+0.1}$
Tucana5 ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ $-{0.04}_{-0.12}^{+0.18}$ $-{1.02}_{-0.11}^{+0.3}$ ${0.0002}_{-0.0001}^{+0.0002}$ $-{0.1}_{-0.2}^{+0.09}$ $-{1.01}_{-0.1}^{+0.23}$
UrsaMajor1 0.003 ± 0.001 −0.5 ± 0.07 −0.65 ± 0.09 0.003 ± 0.001 −0.56 ± 0.06 −0.68 ± 0.08
UrsaMajor2 0.002 ± 0.001 1.73 ± 0.05 −1.87 ± 0.06 0.002 ± 0.001 1.72 ± 0.05 −1.84 ± 0.06
UrsaMinor 0.024 ± 0.001 −0.16 ± 0.01 0.06 ± 0.01 0.024 ± 0.001 −0.16 ± 0.01 0.06 ± 0.01
Willman1 ${0.0004}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ 0.34 ± 0.15 $-{1.06}_{-0.25}^{+0.24}$ ${0.0004}_{-0.0002}^{+0.0003}$ 0.36 ± 0.1 −1.04 ± 0.18

Note. We do not derive robust solutions for Bootes 4, Cetus 3, Indus 2, Pegasus 3, and Virgo 1, and we argue that this is due to a lack of member stars with reliable data in Gaia DR2. Columns 2, 3, and 4 are the derived results using Prior A, and Columns 5, 6, and 7 are the derived results using Prior B.

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Table 4 lists the adopted proper motions for each satellite, and the corresponding tangential velocity components assuming $({R}_{\odot },{V}_{c})=(8.122\,\mathrm{kpc}$, 229 km s−1) and $({U}_{\odot },{V}_{\odot },{W}_{\odot })\,=(11.1,12.24,7.25)$ km s−1 (Schönrich et al. 2010; Gravity Collaboration et al. 2018). The adopted proper motion for each satellite corresponds to that derived using Prior B if it is available, and Prior A otherwise. For the three most distant galaxies in our sample—Eridanus 2, Phoenix, and Leo T—the last three rows of Table 4 also give the results obtained in the absence of the prior on the expected tangential velocity dispersion of the halo.

Table 4.  Preferred Systemic Proper Motion Estimates for the 54 out of 59 Galaxies in Our Sample (Corresponding to Prior B from Table 3 if Available, Prior A Otherwise). As in Table 3, No Results were Able to be Derived for Bootes 4, Cetus 3, Indus 2, Pegasus 3 and Virgo 1. The Corresponding Tangential Velocity Components in a Galactocentric Frame of Reference (${v}_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{v}_{\delta }$) are Listed, as well as the Overall Tangential Velocity (vt). The Implied Galactocentric Radial Velocities are Listed in the Last Column for Comparison, and are Converted from the Heliocentric Radial Velocities Listed in Table 1 (see the Text for Details). The Last Three Rows of the Table Present the Proper Motions for the Three Most Distant Galaxies in Our Sample Derived Without Any Prior on the Expect Tangential Velocity Dispersion of the Halo

Galaxy ${\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta $ (mas/yr) ${\mu }_{\delta }$ (mas/yr) ${v}_{\alpha }\cos \delta $ (km s−1) vδ (km s−1) vt (km s−1) vr (km s−1)
Antlia2a −0.05 ± 0.04 ${0.04}_{-0.05}^{+0.04}$ −2 ± 25 ${72}_{-31}^{+25}$ 72 55
Aquarius2 −0.0 ± 0.16 $-{0.2}_{-0.15}^{+0.16}$ −69 ± 82 ${98}_{-77}^{+82}$ 120 46
Bootes1a −0.47 ± 0.04 −1.07 ± 0.03 11 ± 13 −155 ± 9 155 107
Bootes2 −2.25 ± 0.21 −0.63 ± 0.15 −286 ± 41 58 ± 30 292 −116
CanesVenatici1a −0.26 ± 0.05 −0.06 ± 0.03 −117 ± 52 120 ± 31 167 80
CanesVenatici2 −0.34 ± 0.11 −0.35 ± 0.1 −115 ± 83 −73 ± 76 137 −94
Carinaa 0.48 ± 0.01 0.13 ± 0.01 150 ± 5 71 ± 5 166 −2
Carina2a 1.84 ± 0.03 0.11 ± 0.03 261 ± 5 −17 ± 5 262 245
Carina3 2.99 ± 0.08 ${1.49}_{-0.09}^{+0.1}$ 341 ± 11 ${160}_{-12}^{+13}$ 377 52
Centaurus1 −0.13 ± 0.13 −0.17 ± 0.14 64 ± 72 −19 ± 77 66
Cetus2 ${2.24}_{-1.05}^{+0.63}$ ${0.37}_{-0.66}^{+0.16}$ ${130}_{-131}^{+79}$ ${236}_{-82}^{+20}$ 270
Columba1 0.21 ± 0.09 $-{0.14}_{-0.09}^{+0.1}$ 55 ± 78 $-{12}_{-78}^{+86}$ 56 −21
ComaBerenicesa 0.5 ± 0.05 −1.67 ± 0.04 234 ± 10 −143 ± 8 275 81
Crater2a −0.17 ± 0.04 −0.09 ± 0.02 18 ± 22 82 ± 11 84 −80
DESJ0225+0304 ${1.31}_{-0.76}^{+0.83}$ $-{1.13}_{-0.97}^{+0.85}$ $-{14}_{-86}^{+94}$ ${49}_{-109}^{+96}$ 52
Dracoa −0.01 ± 0.01 −0.14 ± 0.01 127 ± 4 −38 ± 4 133 −88
Draco2 1.06 ± 0.17 0.96 ± 0.18 266 ± 17 137 ± 18 300 −164
Eridanus2 0.11 ± 0.05 −0.06 ± 0.05 39 ± 90 −4 ± 90 39 −73
Eridanus3 0.73 ± 0.18 −0.35 ± 0.17 140 ± 74 −18 ± 70 141
Fornaxa 0.380 ± 0.002 $-{0.416}_{-0.003}^{+0.004}$ 102 ± 1 $-{138}_{-2}^{+3}$ 172 −37
Grus1 −0.05 ± 0.12 −0.41 ± 0.14 −112 ± 68 −12 ± 80 112 −187
Grus2a 0.48 ± 0.06 $-{1.41}_{-0.09}^{+0.08}$ 71 ± 15 $-{119}_{-23}^{+20}$ 138 −132
Herculesa −0.13 ± 0.07 −0.39 ± 0.06 68 ± 44 −85 ± 37 108 150
Horologium1a 0.87 ± 0.05 −0.58 ± 0.05 164 ± 19 −115 ± 19 201 −32
Horologium2 ${0.89}_{-0.23}^{+0.22}$ −0.21 ± 0.25 ${167}_{-85}^{+81}$ 24 ± 92 168 22
Hydra2 −0.26 ± 0.13 −0.05 ± 0.12 −37 ± 83 66 ± 76 76 123
Hydrus1a 3.77 ± 0.03 −1.55 ± 0.03 330 ± 4 −152 ± 4 363 −91
Indus1 ${0.21}_{-0.19}^{+0.16}$ $-{0.72}_{-0.19}^{+0.31}$ ${89}_{-90}^{+76}$ $-{103}_{-90}^{+147}$ 136
Leo1 −0.06 ± 0.07 −0.18 ± 0.08 −20 ± 84 −9 ± 96 22 169
Leo2a −0.12 ± 0.06 −0.17 ± 0.06 −39 ± 66 27 ± 66 48 21
Leo4 −0.2 ± 0.13 −0.26 ± 0.12 −42 ± 95 −13 ± 88 44 5
Leo5 $-{0.11}_{-0.11}^{+0.1}$ −0.21 ± 0.1 ${1}_{-102}^{+93}$ −12 ± 93 12 54
LeoT −0.01 ± 0.05 −0.11 ± 0.05 9 ± 99 0 ± 99 9 −63
Phoenix 0.08 ± 0.05 −0.08 ± 0.05 −2 ± 97 3 ± 97 3 −114
Phoenix2 ${0.44}_{-0.07}^{+0.08}$ −1.03 ± 0.09 ${65}_{-28}^{+32}$ −203 ± 35 213 −41
Pictor1 0.18 ± 0.13 0.0 ± 0.15 −47 ± 71 56 ± 82 73
Pictor2 ${1.18}_{-0.47}^{+0.14}$ ${1.15}_{-0.75}^{+0.13}$ ${168}_{-102}^{+30}$ ${219}_{-163}^{+28}$ 276
Pisces2 0.07 ± 0.11 −0.26 ± 0.11 −24 ± 95 −63 ± 95 67 −69
Reticulum2a 2.39 ± 0.03 −1.3 ± 0.03 182 ± 4 −105 ± 4 210 −97
Reticulum3 0.05 ± 0.21 −0.09 ± 0.2 −137 ± 91 17 ± 87 138 101
Sagittarius2a −0.65 ± 0.07 −0.96 ± 0.04 −182 ± 24 −108 ± 14 212 −98
Sculptora 0.081 ± 0.005 −0.136 ± 0.004 −111 ± 2 136 ± 2 175 77
Segue1 $-{1.59}_{-0.22}^{+0.23}$ $-{3.5}_{-0.21}^{+0.2}$ $-{121}_{-24}^{+25}$ $-{166}_{-23}^{+22}$ 206 109
Segue2 ${1.68}_{-0.13}^{+0.12}$ 0.12 ± 0.08 ${115}_{-21}^{+20}$ 178 ± 13 212 45
Sextans1a −0.44 ± 0.02 0.09 ± 0.02 −124 ± 8 210 ± 8 244 66
Triangulum2 ${0.62}_{-0.15}^{+0.13}$ 0.42 ± 0.11 $-{72}_{-21}^{+19}$ 187 ± 16 200 −253
Tucana2a 0.94 ± 0.05 −1.22 ± 0.06 176 ± 14 −119 ± 16 212 −207
Tucana3a −0.02 ± 0.03 −1.67 ± 0.03 −119 ± 4 −11 ± 4 120 −198
Tucana4 ${0.63}_{-0.12}^{+0.13}$ $-{1.54}_{-0.11}^{+0.1}$ ${24}_{-27}^{+30}$ $-{168}_{-25}^{+23}$ 169 −86
Tucana5 $-{0.1}_{-0.2}^{+0.09}$ $-{1.01}_{-0.1}^{+0.23}$ $-{133}_{-52}^{+24}$ $-{74}_{-26}^{+60}$ 152 −140
UrsaMajor1a −0.56 ± 0.06 −0.68 ± 0.08 −187 ± 28 −86 ± 37 206 −6
UrsaMajor2a 1.72 ± 0.05 −1.84 ± 0.06 256 ± 7 −50 ± 9 261 −31
UrsaMinora −0.16 ± 0.01 0.06 ± 0.01 105 ± 4 81 ± 4 133 −78
Willman1 0.36 ± 0.1 −1.04 ± 0.18 144 ± 18 36 ± 32 148 36
Eridanus2 ${0.35}_{-0.20}^{+0.21}$ −0.08 ± 0.25 ${472}_{-360}^{+378}$ −40 ± 451 473 −73
Phoenix 0.08 ± 0.15 −0.08 ± 0.18 −2 ± 291 3 ± 349 3 −114
LeoT ${0.10}_{-0.69}^{+0.67}$ ${0.01}_{-0.56}^{+0.57}$ ${227}_{-1364}^{+1324}$ ${237}_{-1107}^{+1126}$ 328 −63

Note.

aSystematic uncertainties are a significant or major contributor to the proper motion error budget for this satellite. See Lindegren et al. (2018).

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All error bars describe random errors only, and systematic uncertainties are not included. Lindegren et al. (2018) show that on scales of a degree or less, the systematic uncertainty in each component of the proper motion is approximately 0.066 mas yr−1, although Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c) suggest that for the larger dwarfs (≳0fdg2), the systematic uncertainty per component is 0.035 mas. Adopting a constant systematic uncertainty for each dwarf of 0.066 mas yr−1, and comparing to the random errors listed in Tables 3 and 4, suggests that systematics are a major or dominant component in the uncertainty on the proper motions of Antlia 2, Bootes I, Canes Venatici 1, Carina, Carina 2, Coma Berenices, Crater 2, Draco, Fornax, Grus 2, Hercules, Horologium 1, Hydrus 1, Leo 2, Reticulum 2, Sagittarius 2, Sculptor, Sextans, Tucana 2, Tucana 3, Ursa Major 1, Ursa Major 2, and Ursa Minor.

4.1. Internal Consistency

4.1.1. Comparison of Results with Prior A and B

The internal consistency of our approach is examined for satellites with radial velocity information. In Figure 5, a comparison of the systemic proper motions for satellites derived with (Prior B; blue circles) and without (Prior A; red squares) radial velocity information is shown. μα cos δ is shown on the x-axis, and μδ is shown on the y-axis. Error bars show 1σ uncertainties, excluding systematic errors. The scales are the same on each axis in each panel, but are different between panels, and were chosen to encompass all of the relevant points and their uncertainties. This figure is intended to highlight the relative agreement, or otherwise, between estimates.

Figure 5.

Figure 5. Comparison of systemic proper motions for satellites derived without using radial velocity information (Prior A; red squares), and incorporating radial velocity information (Prior B; blue circles). μα cos δ is shown on the x-axis, and μδ is shown on the y-axis. Error bars show 1σ uncertainties, excluding systematic errors. The scales are the same on each axis in each panel, but are different between panels.

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Without exception, Figure 5 shows extremely good agreement between the two sets of estimates. In all cases, the sets agree to within their combined 1σ uncertainties. This is extremely encouraging and suggests that the adopted methodology is robust in the absence of radial velocity data, in line with the findings from Pace & Li (2019). This will be of increasing importance in the coming years, with the expected flood of discoveries from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST, e.g., Hargis et al. 2014). Inspection of Table 2 shows that even with the current sample, radial velocity follow-up is not immediate or complete.

In general, it appears that radial velocity information is not required to obtain a reasonable estimate of the proper motions of dwarf satellites, but it can play an important role in some cases. For example, the large error bars on the systemic proper motion for Carina 3 using Prior A is the result of a bimodal probability distribution function (PDF). Carina 3 is at low latitude (b  ≃ 18°), where there is considerable foreground contamination in the field, including the satellite Carina 2, which is responsible for the second peak in the PDF. Incorporation of a velocity prior in this case helps to break the degeneracy in the solutions, and leads to a well-defined single-peaked solution. This is demonstrated in Figure 6, which shows the corner plots for Carina 3 in the case of Prior A (left panels) and Prior B (right panels). The same is also true, to a less dramatic extent, for Segue 1, Triangulum 2, and Tucana 4. For these systems, the PDFs without velocity information show some bimodality (although the two peaks are much closer to each other than for Carina 3), but the incorporation of radial velocity information via Prior B collapses these to single-peaked solutions.

Figure 6.

Figure 6. Corner plots for our three unknown parameters for the case of Carina 3 (a) without using radial velocity information (Prior A, left panel), and (b) using radial velocity information (Prior B, right panel).

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Despite the obvious benefits, we find that radial velocity information should be used with caution for systems with only a few radial velocities. It is entirely possible for a star to have a consistent radial velocity (and color–magnitude position, and spatial location), but not actually be a member of the satellite. Indeed, it is because of this consideration that we created Prior B by multiplication of the radial velocity prior with Prior A, rather than a straight substitution of the radial velocity prior for Prior A. For a galaxy with radial velocity follow-up of a large number of stars, this is not generally an issue, but it can be a concern for systems with only a few radial velocity members. For example, the velocity prior for Horologium 2 is based on a single star with $({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta })=(5.81\pm 0.97,-2.05\pm 1.58)$ mas, which passes all of our quality control criteria, including parallax, CMD location within 2σ of the isochrone, the mean radial velocity, and on-sky location within two half-light radii. As a member of Horologium 2, this star would imply a tangential velocity greatly in excess of the escape velocity of the Milky Way. However, by weighting the velocity prior with the original Prior A, our algorithm is able to converge to a more acceptable value. Horologium 2 is the most extreme example of this effect in our analysis, but the principle remains true for each of the systems under study.

4.1.2. Sanity Checks Using Confirmed Radial Velocity Members

An important sanity check of our results is obtained by examining the implied membership of systems for which individual radial velocities are available.

We confirm that the mean (weighted) proper motion of all stars with radial velocities that are confirmed as members (Psat ≥ 0.5) is consistent with the systemic proper motions listed in Table 4. When we originally performed this check for Tucana 4 and Ursa Major 2, we found that the mean proper motions of members with radial velocities were consistent with results using Prior A, not Prior B. The origin of this inconsistency was easily traced to the inclusion of a single deviant star in each system, which were used to create the velocity priors. These two stars had small uncertainties on their proper motions, but their proper motions were notably different to that of the other stars. Exclusion of these two stars from the radial velocity priors led to the solutions tabulated in Tables 3 and 4. Again, this emphasizes the need to carefully examine the radial velocity data for poorly populated systems, where a single measurement (particularly if it has a small uncertainty in its proper motion) can have a significant effect. It also emphasizes the robustness of results derived using Prior A.

When we use the values of the systemic proper motions tabulated in Table 4, the weighted mean proper motions of all member stars with radial velocities is within 1σ of our derived values for 45 of the 47 satellites that use Prior B. Exceptions are Reticulum 3 and Pisces 2:

  • 1.  
    For Reticulum 3, the weighted mean proper motion is based upon two faint (G = 20.1, 19.6) radial velocity members, which have ${({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta })}_{1}=(-0.78\pm 0.89,-1.05\pm 1.12)$ and ${({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta })}_{2}=(-0.78\,\pm 0.72,0.30\pm 0.83)$ mas, respectively. These individual measurements are highly uncertain, and the individual error bars comfortably overlap with the derived systemic proper motion reported in Table 4. Their combined mean proper motion in the R.A. and decl. directions are within 2σ and 1σ of the derived systemic proper motion for Reticulum 3, respectively.
  • 2.  
    For Pisces 2, the weighted "mean" proper motion is based upon a single faint (G = 19.1) radial velocity member, which has a proper motion ${({\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta ,{\mu }_{\delta })}_{1}=(-0.62\pm 0.74,-1.38\pm 0.59)$ mas. This is within 1σ and 2σ of the derived systemic proper motion for Pisces 2 in the R.A. and decl. directions, respectively.

We conclude from this analysis that our derived systemic proper motions are internally self-consistent.

4.2. Contamination and Completeness

We now turn our attention to examining the contamination and completeness fractions of this new technique. This provides an indirect test on the robustness of our proper motion estimates. For example, if this technique assigned many stars as members that cannot be members (or many stars as nonmembers that are clearly members), then this technique would not be trustworthy.

4.2.1. Contamination: Radial Velocity Nonmembers

Most stars that are identified as a member of a dwarf satellite, and which also have a radial velocity measurement, should have a radial velocity that is consistent with membership. The number of stars with deviant radial velocities helps us to estimate our contamination fraction, Fcont.

Some radial velocity information is available for 47 satellites for which we derive systemic proper motions (see Table 2) for a total of nDR2 = 14,675 stars that are also present in Gaia DR2. Of these, nQC = 8912 stars pass our quality cuts and lie within our likelihood grids (defined in Section 3). However, these stars are not evenly distributed across the satellites: 6525 of them are found in only 6 galaxies (Fornax, Sculptor, Carina, Draco, Ursa Minor, and Sextans). Table 5 describes the distribution of radial velocity measurements between galaxies.

Table 5.  Summary of Membership Contamination Rates Estimated from Radial Velocity Data

Galaxy nDR2 nQC ${n}_{\mathrm{QC},\mathrm{cont}}$ nm ${n}_{m,\mathrm{cont}}$ Fcont
 
Overall 14675 8912 3280 5173 173 0.05
Excluding galaxies with ${n}_{m}\gt 100$:
  5595 2387 1592 462 25 0.02
Fornax 2482 1951 37 1922 28 0.76
Sculptor 1457 1243 70 1185 30 0.43
Carina 1854 1246 676 544 56 0.08
Draco 1419 950 467 414 6 0.01
UrsaMinor 958 580 172 377 4 0.02
Sextans1 910 555 266 269 24 0.09
Leo2 219 59 3 56 1 0.33
Crater2 404 189 122 55 2 0.02
CanesVenatici1 144 55 10 45 2 0.2
Bootes1 275 122 75 37 7 0.09
Hydrus1 139 95 60 30 3 0.05
Reticulum2 59 38 12 24 0 0.0
Hercules 81 39 15 18 0 0.0
Tucana3 675 294 265 18 5 0.02
Leo1 381 22 2 15 0 0.0
Antlia2 221 202 57 11 0 0.0
UrsaMajor2 128 39 24 11 2 0.08
ComaBerenices 47 21 6 10 0 0.0
Tucana2 95 53 34 10 0 0.0
UrsaMajor1 107 32 13 10 0 0.0
CanesVenatici2 41 15 6 9 0 0.0
Eridanus2 42 17 7 9 0 0.0
Phoenix 116 13 3 9 0 0.0
Draco2 44 18 11 7 0 0.0
Grus2 254 105 83 7 0 0.0
Carina2 283 217 200 6 1 0.0
Horologium1 19 12 6 6 0 0.0
Segue1 310 113 104 6 2 0.02
Sagittarius2 120 31 24 5 0 0.0
Grus1 70 21 14 5 0 0.0
Hydra2 18 10 4 5 0 0.0
LeoT 39 10 4 5 0 0.0
Bootes2 8 4 0 4 0  
Phoenix2 75 18 4 4 0 0.0
Segue2 214 55 33 4 0 0.0
Columba1 49 29 21 3 0 0.0
Tucana4 209 82 58 3 0 0.0
Aquarius2 10 3 1 2 0 0.0
Carina3 283 219 213 2 0 0.0
Leo5 124 33 29 2 0 0.0
Reticulum3 45 26 22 2 0 0.0
Tucana5 29 17 12 2 0 0.0
Willman1 66 11 3 2 0 0.0
Leo4 25 5 4 1 0 0.0
Pisces2 7 4 3 1 0 0.0
Triangulum2 28 19 14 1 0 0.0
Horologium2 92 20 11 0 0 0.0

Note. nDR2 is the number of Gaia stars with ground-based radial velocity data for each satellite; nQC is the number of these stars that pass our quality control cuts; ${n}_{\mathrm{QC},\mathrm{cont}}$ is the number of these stars that have radial velocities more than 3σ from the mean velocity of the satellite; nm is the number of stars that are considered high-probability members (${P}_{\mathrm{sat}}\geqslant 0.5$) by our algorithm; ${n}_{m,\mathrm{cont}}$ is the number of these stars with radial velocities that are more than $3\sigma $ different from the mean radial velocity of the satellite. Fcont is the percentage contamination per galaxy, estimated as the ratio of ${n}_{m,\mathrm{cont}}$ to ${n}_{\mathrm{QC},\mathrm{cont}}$.

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When we define member stars as those stars with Psat ≥ 0.5, there are a total of nm = 5173 member stars with radial velocities across all satellites. Of these, only ${n}_{m,\mathrm{cont}}=173$ of them have velocities that are more than 3σ from the mean systemic radial velocity (as given in Table 1). When we only consider the dwarf satellite galaxies with fewer than 100 members with radial velocity measurements (i.e., excluding the 6 galaxies mentioned previously), the sample of 462 stars includes a total of 25 contaminants. To understand what this means for the average contamination rate, it is important to recognize that each galaxy had different levels of contamination prior to the application of the algorithm. In particular, there were a total of ${n}_{\mathrm{QC},\mathrm{cont}}=3280$ stars that passed our initial cuts and had velocities more than 3σ from the mean systemic radial velocity of the satellites. Because only 173 of these remain after application of the algorithm, we find ${F}_{\mathrm{cont}}={n}_{m,\mathrm{cont}}/{n}_{\mathrm{QC},\mathrm{cont}}=0.05$. When the brightest satellites are ignored, Fcont = 0.016.5

Of course, there can be significant variations in these results between the dwarf satellite galaxies. Fornax and Sculptor have high values of Fcont, but the radial velocity sample we used is already extremely clean, and so the algorithm cannot significantly improve on the high purity. In contrast, Draco initially has 467 stars out of 950 with discrepant velocities, and our algorithm identifies only 6 stars out of 414 members with discrepant velocities. Table 5 breaks these numbers down on a galaxy-by-galaxy basis. Based on these numbers, we have high confidence in the ability of our algorithm to select member stars with only modest (≤1 in 20) contamination. This also implies that the systemic proper motion estimates are robust to contamination effects.

4.2.2. Completeness: Confirmed Members via High-resolution Spectroscopy

To the extent that it is possible to "know" that a star is a member of a satellite, stars that have had their stellar parameters determined and chemical abundances derived from high-resolution spectroscopy are the gold standard. Prior to Gaia DR2, such stars were usually targeted for follow-up spectroscopy based on spatial coincidence, color–magnitude consistency, and radial velocity matching (post Gaia DR2, proper motion consistency is also usually required). For stars with published high-resolution spectroscopy, their subsequent analyses would confirm their memberships, and provide metallicity and abundance characteristics. We examine the completeness of our algorithm by determining our ability to retrieve these "known" members.

A search of the literature was carried out for all stars in the ultrafaint satellites (here defined as MV  ≲ −8) for which high-resolution spectroscopic analyses exist and that are present in Gaia DR2. This list is intended to be complete up to 2020 May, and contains a total of 91 stars. These were cross-matched with our stellar catalogs to calculate the implied values of Psat for each star based on our algorithm. Of these 91 stars, 16 stars are assigned Psat < 0.5 and are listed in Table 6; the other 75 stars are listed in a table in the Appendix, Table A1, in the same format.

Table 6.  Membership Probabilities for Stars in Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxies Studied in the Literature. This Table Includes All Stars with ${P}_{{sat}}\lt 0.5$. See Table A1 for Stars with ${P}_{{sat}}\geqslant 0.5$

Galaxy Reference Star ID RA Dec G $r/{r}_{h}$ Gaia DR2 source ID Psat Comments
Bootes1 Frebel et al. (2016) Boo-980 13:59:12.68 +13:42:55.7 17.88 4.4 1230649834160653440 0.01 At several rh
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-V3 07:35:09.12 −57:57:14.8 18.47 1.7 5293940924860019584 $\lt {10}^{-10}$ RR Lyrae variable
Carina2 Li et al. (2018b) J073646.47-575910.2 07:36:46.47 −57:59:10.1 19.41 0.5 5293948273547045248 0.36 Binary star
Carina2 Li et al. (2018b) J073729.30-580447.8 07:37:29.28 −58:04:47.7 19.14 1.5 5293900513510499584 0.08  
Carina2 Li et al. (2018b) J073737.04-574925.5 07:37:37.02 −57:49:25.4 19.79 2.2 5293959680980519424 $\lt {10}^{-14}$ BHB
Carina2 Li et al. (2018b) J073745.86-580406.7 07:37:45.85 −58:04:06.7 18.85 1.8 5293900857107911808 $\lt {10}^{-31}$ BHB
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 12175 16:31:15.82 +12:34:56.5 18.34 6.0 4460295812884988672 0.01 At several rh
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 12729 16:31:07.49 +12:31:33.7 19.6 8.1 4460293953161686656 0.00033 At several rh
Horologium2 Fritz et al. (2019) horo2_2_48 03:17:21.08 −50:03:40.6 18.74 8.2 4749201525396641408 0.00094 At several rh
Segue1 Frebel et al. (2014) J100702+155055 10:07:02.46 +15:50:55.2 18.0 5.2 621924492960734464 0.00142 At several rh
Segue1 Frebel et al. (2014) J100742+160106 10:07:42.71 +16:01:06.9 18.16 3.1 621933460851966976 0.3  
Segue1 Frebel et al. (2014) J100639+160008 10:06:39.33 +16:00:08.5 19.04 2.1 621941535390988928 0.37  
Segue1 Norris et al. (2010a) SegueI-7 10:08:14.44 +16:05:01.1 17.45 4.5 621934805177217920 0.00024 At several rh
Triangulum2 Venn et al. (2017), Ji et al. (2019) Star46 02:13:21.54 +36:09:57.4 18.84 0.4 331086526201161088 0.04 Binary star
Tucana3 Marshall et al. (2019) J000549-593406 00:05:48.72 −59:34:06.2 16.2 11.7 4917991682841282176 $\lt {10}^{-7}$ At many rh (in tails)
Tucana3 Marshall et al. (2019) J234351-593926 23:43:50.85 −59:39:25.8 17.22 16.1 6488511925629603200 $\lt {10}^{-8}$ At many rh (in tails)

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Analysis of the stars in Table 6 reveals the following relevant details for membership considerations:

  • 1.  
    Eight of these stars are at radii corresponding to more than four half-light radii (accounting for the elliptical shape of the satellites). When we assume that the spatial distribution of stars in these satellites are very well described by the parameters listed in Table 1, it is increasingly likely that the most distant stars are not members. However, the structure of faint dwarf galaxies, especially at large radius, can be very complex, and it is known that some of these systems have extended tidal features that are not well captured by the simple parameterizations in Table 1 (especially Tucana 3; see Li et al. 2018a). As currently constructed, this algorithm will preferentially assign low-probability measurements to stars at large radius, and this may include stars that are actually members. If these stars are subsequently shown to be members of the satellite, then this will imply that the satellite's structure is more complex than currently parameterized in the spatial likelihood functions.
  • 2.  
    Three stars are horizontal branch stars, either blue horizontal branch or RR Lyrae. As our algorithm considers membership of the satellite in color–magnitude space in relation to the proximity of the star to the main isochrone locus (main-sequence, subgiant, or red giant branch stars), then it is not surprising that these horizontal branch stars are not identified as members.
  • 3.  
    Two stars appear to be in binary systems, one in Carina 2 (Li et al. 2018b) and another in Triangulum 2 (Venn et al. 2017). It is unclear if (or how) these affected the ability of the algorithm to determine their memberships.

If we consider stars with spatial and color–magnitude characteristics that should be well captured by the algorithm (specifically, stars within four half-light radii that are not on the horizontal branch), there are 80 relevant stars in Tables 6 and A1. Of these, 75 stars (94% of the sample) have Psat ≥ 0.5. Interestingly, two of the five stars missed by the algorithm in this case are known binaries. With the necessary caveat relating to the structure of galaxies at large radii, we conclude that the algorithm is reasonably complete in correctly identifying main-sequence, subgiant, and red giant branch stars as members of the dwarf satellites under consideration.

4.3. Comparison to Literature Estimates

Figure 7 shows a comparison between the adopted systemic proper motion from Table 4 and all literature estimates for those satellites based on Gaia DR2 for which previous estimates are published. ${\mu }_{\alpha }\cos \delta $ is shown on the x-axis, and μδ is shown on the y-axis. The adopted systemic proper motions derived in this paper are shown as blue points with blue error bars. Error bars or the semiaxes of the ellipses correspond to 1σ uncertainties, excluding systematic errors. The scales are the same on each axis in each panel, but different between panels, and were chosen to encompass all of the relevant points and their uncertainties. This figure is intended only to highlight the relative agreement, or otherwise, between estimates. Literature estimates are shown either as error bars or ellipses:

  • 1.  
    Solid black ellipses correspond to estimates from Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c);
  • 2.  
    Dotted red ellipses correspond to estimates from Simon (2018);
  • 3.  
    Dashed green ellipses correspond to estimates from Fritz et al. (2018);
  • 4.  
    Dot–dashed cyan ellipses correspond to estimates from Kallivayalil et al. (2018);
  • 5.  
    Dashed gray ellipses correspond to estimates from Massari & Helmi (2018);
  • 6.  
    Green error bars correspond to estimates from Pace & Li (2019);
  • 7.  
    Dot–dashed magenta ellipses correspond to estimates from Fritz et al. (2019; Horologium 2, Reticulum 3, Columba 1, Phoenix 2), Simon et al. (2020; Grus 2, Tucana 4, Tucana 5), Longeard et al. (2018; Draco 2), Longeard et al. (2020b; Sagittarius 2), Torrealba et al. (2019; Antlia 2), Mau et al. (2020; Centaurus 1), Fu et al. (2019; Crater 2, Hercules), and Pace et al. (2020; Ursa Minor);
  • 8.  
    Dotted blue ellipses correspond to estimates from Gregory et al. (2020; Hercules) and Chakrabarti et al. (2019; Antlia 2).

Figure 7.

Figure 7. Comparison of the preferred systemic proper motions derived in this paper (blue circles) to previous estimates derived from Gaia DR2 data in the literature for those satellites where previous estimates exist. μα cos δ is shown on the x-axis, and μδ is shown on the y-axis. The scales are the same in each panel, but different between panels. Error bars or semiaxis lengths correspond to 1σ uncertainties, and exclude systematic uncertainties. Literature estimates are from Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c; solid black ellipses), Simon (2018; dotted red ellipses), Fritz et al. (2018; dashed green ellipses), Kallivayalil et al. (2018; dot–dashed cyan ellipses), Massari & Helmi (2018; dashed gray ellipses), Pace & Li (2019; green error bars), Fritz et al. (2019), Simon et al. (2020), Longeard et al. (2018, 2020b), Torrealba et al. (2019), Fu et al. (2019), Pace et al. (2020) and Mau et al. (2020; magenta dot–dashed ellipses), Chakrabarti et al. (2019), and Gregory et al. (2020; blue dotted ellipses).

Standard image High-resolution image

Inspection of Figure 7 shows good consistency between literature estimates for the satellites using Gaia DR2 and the new estimates derived here. Indeed, while there can be considerable spread in the measurements for each satellite between different studies, none of the values derived here are farther than ∼1σ from at least one of the literature estimates. It is also interesting to note that two of the brightest satellites—Fornax and Sextans—appear to have some of the most discrepant measurements in this plot. However, this is largely a result of the absence of a scale in the panels of Figure 7. Fornax and Sextans have mean random uncertainities in Table 4 of ∼2 μas yr−1 and 20 μas yr−1, respectively. Systematic uncertainties in these proper motions are on the order of several tens of μas yr−1 (Lindegren et al. 2018), i.e., an order of magnitude larger than the random errors for Fornax, and the same order as the random errors for Sextans.

Almost all of the measurements that are highlighted by ellipses in Figure 7 are derived from the weighted mean proper motion of a subset of stars that were previously identified as members. In contrast, our approach is inspired by Pace & Li (2019; green error bars), in which determination of the most likely systemic proper motion is made by the analysis of the full data set in the vicinity of the satellite, members and nonmembers alike. As such, our uncertainties are in general smaller. Additionally, the maximum uncertainties that we measure on the systemic proper motions are of order 100 km s−1 in each direction, and this is a result of our prior, as discussed in Section 3.5. While this is reasonable for most of the objects under discussion, it is important to realize that Eridanus 2, Phoenix, and Leo T are sufficiently distant that the assumption that they trace the velocity dispersion of the Milky Way halo may be incorrect. As such, we also list in Table 4 the systemic proper motions for these three galaxies in the absence of this prior. It is notable that the uncertainties increase significantly, especially for Leo T.

While our uncertainties for most satellites are generally smaller than previous literature estimates, this is not the case for Antlia 2 (Torrealba et al. 2019; Chakrabarti et al. 2019). We think that this is due to the extreme foreground contamination for Antlia 2; i.e., the value of fsat that we calculate corresponds to only a few in every million stars that we would consider to be actual members. Thus, for individual stars, the probability that it is a member of Antlia 2 is much lower than for most other galaxies, and this propagates through to our estimate of the systematic proper motion. For those stars that have estimates by Pace & Li (2019), the difference in the size of the uncertainties between this study and Pace & Li (2019) is likely a result of our Milky Way contamination model, in which we do not have additional parameters that need to be marginalized over.

Only estimates using Gaia DR2 are shown in Figure 7. Many of the brighter satellites also have previous estimates of their proper motions derived using Hubble Space Telescope observations. These are compared to estimates from Gaia DR2 in Figure 15 of Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c). These authors note agreement between their estimates and previous estimates at the 2σ level, and also note the much smaller error bars that are made possible by the Gaia DR2 data. Encouraging, they also find that the Gaia-based estimates agree best with those galaxies for which the space-based data have the longest baselines. The results from Gaia Collaboration et al. (2018c) are shown in Figure 7 as black ellipses, and it is clear that we agree closely with their estimates, especially when systematic uncertainties are taken into account.

Finally, we compare the 1σ (random) uncertainties in our estimates of the systemic proper motions to the uncertainties on the previous literature estimates using Gaia DR2. For each satellite in Figure 7, we selected the literature estimate that had the smallest quoted random uncertainties (averaged in both directions), σlit. This value is compared to our average uncertainty for each galaxy, σMcVenn. In the median, σMcVenn ≃ 0.74σlit (${\sigma }_{{McVenn}}\simeq 0.77{\sigma }_{{lit}}$ excluding those galaxies for which the prior is imposing a maximum uncertainty of around 100 km s−1). Overall, this suggests that our algorithm provides robust proper motion values with significantly improved random uncertainties.

4.4. At the Limits of Gaia: New Systemic Proper Motions

In addition to the 49 satellites shown in Figure 7 that have previous estimates from the literature, we derived estimates of the systemic proper motions for the first time for 5 other satellites: Indus 1, DES J0225+0304, Leo T, Cetus 2, and Pictor 2. The latter three are less robust than for the other systems. In addition, for Bootes 4, Cetus 3, Indus 2, Pegasus 3, and Virgo 1, we cannot resolve any signal for the systemic proper motions of these satellites in Gaia DR2. We discuss each of these systems in more detail.

In Figure 8 the 1D PDFs for fsat for the 10 satellites with new or no systemic proper motions are shown as the blue (filled) histograms. The top row shows the systems with new proper motions that we argue are robust, the second row shows those systems with new proper motions that are less robust (for reasons we discuss below), and the remaining rows show the systems for which no proper motion is derived. As fsat is the fraction of stars that belong to the satellite, then when the most likely value for fsat is zero, this implies that no stars belong to that satellite, and we cannot derive a robust systemic proper motion.

Figure 8.

Figure 8. For each of the 10 satellites with new or no systemic proper motions, the blue (filled) histograms show the 1D PDFs for fsat. The orange (empty) histograms show the same PDFs derived using looser cuts on the Gaia data (specifically, ruwe < 1.4 and no cuts on the photometric quality). The top row shows those systems with new proper motions that we argue are robust, the second row shows those systems with new proper motions that are less robust, and the remaining rows show those systems for which no proper motion is derived.

Standard image High-resolution image

For the satellites in the top row of Figure 8, it is clear that the most likely value for fsat is greater than zero (the peak of the PDF is resolved). This is especially clear for Indus 1. For DES J0255+0304, the peak is more marginally resolved, but it is at a value greater than zero. For all of the remaining satellites, the most likely value of fsat is zero.

As fsat was not resolved for several satellites, we decided to rerun the algorithm for all of the 10 satellites in Figure 8, but with looser selections on the data under consideration. In particular, the cut on the astrometric quality of the data was loosened (very slightly), such that ruwe  <  1.4, and the cut on the photometric quality of the data was removed. This latter change is the most significant: by no longer applying the cut described in Equation (1), many more stars were included for the analysis, including potential member stars of satellites. However, we did this knowing that there are concerns with the consistency of the G, BP, and RP photometry, which may affect the robustness of the CMD likelihood analysis.

The orange (empty) histogram in each panel of Figure 8 shows the corresponding PDFs for fsat using this revised data set. For the satellites in the top row, the position of the peak of the PDF is relatively unchanged. In each of these two cases, the corresponding systemic proper motion is statistically the same as previously, giving us confidence in the robustness of the result, especially for DES J0255+0304. This system is relatively close at only ∼20 kpc, suggesting that there are just not very many stars in this galaxy in the Gaia magnitude range.

The situation for DES J0255+0304 should be compared with the satellites in the second row of Figure 8, where there is a clear difference in the PDF for fsat between the two versions of the data set. For Leo T and Cetus 2, the peak in fsat is clearly resolved with the looser cuts on the data. For Pictor 2, the situation is more ambiguous, but even here it appears that the favored model has fsat > 0.

Leo T has radial velocity data available, and the use of the looser quality cuts enables a solution to be determined using both Prior A and Prior B. Indeed, the weighted mean proper motion of those members (Psat > 0.5) with radial velocities is entirely consistent with the derived value (as discussed for all the satellites in Section 4.1.2). However, in all cases, the individual uncertainties in the proper motions of each member star are very large (greater than 1 mas yr−1) and the relatively small uncertainty in the systemic proper motion derived under the assumption that Leo T traces the tangential velocity dispersion of the halo is due to the prior (as comparison to the final entries in Table 4 makes clear). Nevertheless, no stars are assigned membership of Leo T that have inconsistent radial velocities. Most encouraging of all, all five stars with radial velocities that we determine to be members are also, completely independently, determined to be members by Simon & Geha (2007), where they use a combination of SDSS photometry and a selection of spectral characteristics to assign membership. These findings give us confidence that despite the poorer quality photometry, our estimates of the proper motion of Leo T are reasonable given the data and the priors.

We conclude from this analysis that the measurements for Indus 1 and DES J0255+030 are robust. We present the measurements for Leo T, Cetus 2, and Pictor 2 using the looser cuts on the data alongside the other measurements in Tables 3 and 4. We stress that the proper motions for Leo T, Cetus 2, and Pictor 2 are based in part on photometry that may not be reliable. Any analyses that use these three measurements should proceed with caution, and we expect that future data releases from Gaia—potentially including the imminent EDR3—may contain sufficiently improved photometry to improve these three measurements. Table 7 lists all those stars in these five objects for which Psat ≥ 0.5.

Table 7.  Stars Identified as Members (${P}_{\mathrm{sat}}\geqslant 0.5$) by Our Algorithm in Systems with Newly Derived Proper Motions

Galaxy Gaia DR2 Source ID R.A. Decl. G Psat
Cetus2 2355341476508455680 01:17:53.76 −17:25:58.1 20.2 0.97
Cetus2 2355341583883100160 01:17:55.18 −17:25:16.3 20.9 0.91
Cetus2 2355341824400788352 01:17:54.72 −17:24:16.2 20.9 0.88
Cetus2 2355341137206398592 01:17:40.96 −17:27:55.5 20.0 0.8
Cetus2 2355366181160358528 01:17:48.77 −17:22:23.5 20.6 0.65
DES J0225+0304 2515347012786866688 02:25:42.32 +03:03:33.6 19.6 0.68
Indus1 6476977533258082304 21:08:45.01 −51:10:18.2 19.6 0.91
Indus1 6476965472989876864 21:09:02.65 −51:12:34.8 17.6 0.85
Indus1 6476977468833947392 21:08:51.20 −51:09:29.6 20.9 0.8
LeoT 620750528074286592 09:34:51.14 +17:02:17.5 20.4 0.99
LeoT 620753654810753024 09:34:54.50 +17:04:17.9 20.5 0.96
LeoT 620750558139087744 09:34:53.95 +17:02:17.8 20.7 0.95
LeoT 620753684875529728 09:34:49.78 +17:04:30.9 20.3 0.9
LeoT 620750489419612544 09:34:57.28 +17:02:21.8 20.6 0.8
LeoT 620750287556115712 09:34:58.64 +17:01:40.1 20.5 0.56
Pictor2 5480249356255194112 06:44:54.69 −59:55:03.0 17.1 1.0
Pictor2 5480252925370608000 06:44:17.12 −59:53:56.4 17.7 0.86

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5. Summary

We have presented a new derivation of systemic proper motions for most of the Milky Way dwarf galaxy satellite population, using a maximum likelihood approach inspired by the work of Pace & Li (2019). Our approach differs insofar as we examine simultaneously the likelihood of the spatial, color–magnitude, and proper motion distribution of sources, and adopt empirical models for the unknown Milky Way contamination instead of constructing models that need to be marginalized over. In addition, radial velocity information (where available) is incorporated into the analysis through a prior on the model.

Analysis of the implied membership distribution of the satellites suggests that we accurately identify member stars with a contamination rate of ≤1 in 20. The associated uncertainties on the systemic proper motions are on average a factor of ∼1.4 smaller than existing literature values. Systemic proper motions are derived for the first time for some of the faintest and most distant satellites, namely Indus 1, DES J0225+0304, Cetus 2, Pictor 2, and Leo T.

The coming months and years will see the ongoing study of the orbits of the Milky Way satellites, first through dynamical studies enabled by Gaia EDR3, and subsequent data releases, and then with the dwarf galaxy discovery power of LSST. It is a testament to the success of Gaia that the challenge for the observer in this coming era is the exact opposite of what it has been for the past 30 or 40 years. The study of the orbits of the faint and distant satellites of the Milky Way in the 2020s will not be limited by an observer's inability to make the intrinsically complex measurement of the change in the mean position of a set of stars, but rather by our ability to obtain telescope time to make the intrinsically simple measurements of the Doppler shifts of those same stars.

Thanks to the entire team of the Gemini High Resolution Optical Spectrograph (GHOST) for creating a fantastic instrument that is waiting patiently for us all to commission and use. In the meantime, you have provided us with the motivation to tackle the target selection issue, for which this paper has been a very enjoyable spin-off.

A.W.M. and K.A.V. would like to acknowledge funding from the National Science and Engineering Research Council Discovery Grants program. We thank Andrew Pace, Ting Li, and Josh Simon for very useful feedback, and we thank the referee for very useful and constructive comments.

This work has made use of data from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Gaia (https://www.cosmos.esa.int/gaia), processed by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC, https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dpac/consortium). Funding for the DPAC has been provided by national institutions, in particular the institutions participating in the Gaia Multilateral Agreement.

Appendix

We include here the results of our literature search for stars in ultrafaint satellites that have high-resolution spectroscopic follow-up, including the relevant identification in Gaia DR2 and the membership probability assigned by our algorithm. Table 6 listed the 16 stars for which Psat < 0.5, and this Appendix contains Table A1, which lists the 75 stars for which Psat ≥ 0.5. We refer to the relevant discussion in Section 4.2.2.

Table A1.  Membership Probabilities for Stars in Ultra-faint Dwarf Galaxies Studied in the Literature. This Table Includes All Stars with ${P}_{{sat}}\geqslant 0.5$. See Table 6 for Stars with ${P}_{{sat}}\lt 0.5$

Galaxy Reference Star ID RA Dec G $r/{r}_{h}$ Gaia DR2 source ID Psat
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-007 13:59:35.52 +14:20:23.7 17.62 1.2 1230826335841709184 0.96
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-033 14:00:11.72 +14:25:01.4 17.51 0.5 1230830222787069056 1.0
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-094 14:00:31.50 +14:34:03.6 16.62 0.8 1230835892143883008 1.0
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-117 14:00:10.49 +14:31:45.5 17.46 0.2 1230835578610843648 1.0
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-121 14:00:36.52 +14:39:27.3 17.11 1.2 1230861043472371712 1.0
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-127 14:00:14.56 +14:35:52.7 17.4 0.6 1230837163454204672 1.0
Bootes1 Feltzing et al. (2009) Boo-911 14:00:01.07 +14:36:51.5 17.18 0.6 1230848914484728064 1.0
Bootes1 Norris et al. (2010a) Boo-1137 13:58:33.81 +14:21:08.5 17.37 2.7 1230744529599617280 0.94
Bootes1 Frebel et al. (2016) Boo-9 13:59:48.80 +14:19:42.9 17.13 1.0 1230823247760125184 1.0
Bootes1 Frebel et al. (2016) Boo-41 14:00:25.83 +14:26:07.6 17.7 0.7 1230831047420766464 0.99
Bootes1 Frebel et al. (2016) Boo-119 14:00:09.85 +14:28:23.0 17.73 0.2 1230833585745987968 0.98
Bootes1 Frebel et al. (2016) Boo-130 13:59:48.97 +14:30:06.2 17.51 0.5 1230834826991993088 1.0
Bootes2 François et al. (2016) J135801.42+125105.0 13:58:01.42 +12:51:05.0 19.1 0.1 3727827241204558720 0.98
Bootes2 François et al. (2016) J135751.18+125136.9 13:57:51.18 +12:51:36.9 18.76 0.7 3727827382938730496 0.97
CanesVenatici François et al. (2016) J125713.63+341846.9 12:57:13.64 +34:18:47.0 18.98 1.0 1515697257293619584 1.0
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-6544 07:36:51.11 −58:01:46.4 15.07 0.6 5293947247051916544 1.0
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-7872 07:36:51.89 −58:16:39.2 15.5 2.0 5293894539213647872 1.0
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-5664 07:38:08.51 −58:09:35.1 16.33 2.5 5293896360279425664 0.99
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-0064 07:36:21.26 −57:58:00.2 16.78 0.2 5293951473299720064 1.0
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-9296 07:37:39.79 −58:05:06.9 17.72 1.7 5293900827045399296 0.88
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-4704 07:35:37.67 −58:01:51.7 17.4 1.2 5293928074318184704 0.99
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-2064 07:36:01.33 −57:58:43.8 18.22 0.6 5293951881319592064 0.61
Carina2 Ji et al. (2020) CarII-4928 07:36:24.99 −57:57:14.2 18.42 0.3 5293951503362524928 0.91
Carina3 Ji et al. (2020) CarIII-1120 07:38:22.30 −57:53:02.1 17.46 0.5 5293955665187701120 1.0
Carina3 Ji et al. (2020) CarIII-8144 07:38:34.93 −57:57:05.3 17.65 1.0 5293907630273478144 1.0
ComaBerenices Frebel et al. (2010) S1 12:26:43.47 +23:57:02.5 17.91 0.8 3959869107138860800 1.0
ComaBerenices Frebel et al. (2010) S2 12:26:55.46 +23:56:09.8 17.81 0.4 3959874634761013120 1.0
ComaBerenices Frebel et al. (2010) S3 12:26:56.66 +23:56:11.8 17.26 0.5 3959873883142494208 1.0
Grus1 Ji et al. (2019) Gru1-032 22:56:58.07 −50:13:58.1 17.63 3.8 6513255850697323648 0.87
Grus1 Ji et al. (2019) Gru1-038 22:56:29.93 −50:04:33.5 18.4 3.9 6514762009827996032 0.78
Hercules Koch et al. (2008) Her_2_42241 16:30:57.23 +12:47:20.3 18.3 0.3 4460319761622689152 1.0
Hercules Koch et al. (2008, 2014) Her_3_41082 16:31:22.96 +12:44:47.9 18.66 1.1 4460316012113878528 0.94
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 40789 16:31:29.77 +12:44:25.0 19.19 1.3 4460315840315183360 0.86
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 40993 16:31:25.04 +12:45:29.2 19.4 1.0 4460316115193097856 0.93
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 41460 16:31:14.06 +12:45:26.6 19.27 0.8 4460319001411691776 0.94
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 41743 16:31:08.12 +12:48:06.1 19.11 0.6 4460319379374101760 0.88
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 42096 16:31:00.63 +12:49:31.8 19.26 1.0 4460320410161056640 0.96
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 42149 16:30:59.32 +12:47:25.6 18.86 0.2 4460319727263070208 0.99
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 42324 16:30:55.46 +12:46:10.8 19.43 0.9 4460319585527257216 0.91
Hercules Koch et al. (2013) 42795 16:30:44.50 +12:49:47.8 19.19 0.9 4460367036326028160 0.87
Horologium1 Nagasawa et al. (2018) J025540-540807 02:55:40.32 −54:08:07.2 18.03 1.5 4740853586442400256 1.0
Horologium1 Nagasawa et al. (2018) J025543-544349 02:55:43.81 −54:05:19.6 17.55 1.7 4740854273637197952 1.0
Horologium1 Nagasawa et al. (2018) J025535-540643 02:55:35.22 −54:06:44.0 16.82 0.4 4740853865615992320 1.0
Leo4 Simon et al. (2010) S1 11:32:56.00 −00:30:27.8 18.87 0.6 3797163406525039232 0.96
Leo4 François et al. (2016) LeoIV 11:32:58.70 −00:34:50.0 19.75 1.1 3797154095035913216 0.75
Phoenix2 Fritz et al. (2019) phx2_8_64 23:39:55.80 −54:22:08.4 17.89 1.5 6497793143797836032 1.0
Pisces2 Spite et al. (2018) PiscesII10694 22:58:25.08 +05:57:20.1 19.14 1.2 2663690544626120448 0.68
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033523-540407 03:35:23.86 −54:04:07.6 15.73 0.5 4732507472849709568 1.0
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033607-540235 03:36:07.77 −54:02:35.5 16.91 0.8 4732598457436901760 1.0
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033447-540525 03:34:47.95 −54:05:25.0 17.03 1.5 4732506785654950016 1.0
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033531-540148 03:35:31.16 −54:01:48.2 17.11 0.7 4732507983952648704 1.0
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033548-540349 03:35:48.06 −54:03:49.8 17.79 0.5 4732504724070638208 1.0
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033537-540401 03:35:37.08 −54:04:01.2 18.13 0.4 4732507605992924672 0.99
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033556-540316 03:35:56.30 −54:03:16.2 18.46 0.5 4732598487502150016 0.98
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033457-540531 03:34:57.59 −54:05:31.4 18.5 1.3 4732506820014686464 0.94
Reticulum2 Ji et al. (2016) DESJ033454-540558 03:34:54.26 −54:05:58.0 18.51 1.4 4732506716935472384 0.98
Sagittarius2 Longeard et al. (2020a) 298.16146 19:52:38.75 −22:04:57.6 18.72 0.6 6864047618136214528 0.9
Segue1 Frebel et al. (2014) J100714+160154 10:07:14.58 +16:01:54.5 18.33 1.4 621939679965123456 0.9
Segue1 Frebel et al. (2014) J100710+160623 10:07:10.07 +16:06:23.9 18.71 0.6 621949747368482304 0.71
Segue1 Frebel et al. (2014) J100652+160235 10:06:52.33 +16:02:35.8 18.4 1.0 621943184658438784 0.97
Segue2 Roederer & Kirby (2014) J021933.13+200830.2 02:19:33.13 +20:08:30.2 16.18 1.4 87202026681250432 1.0
Triangulum2 Venn et al. (2017), Ji et al. (2019) Star40 02:13:16.55 +36:10:45.8 17.02 0.0 331089446778920576 0.99
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018) TucII-006 22:51:43.08 −58:32:33.8 18.27 0.3 6503772322389658880 0.99
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018) TucII-011 22:51:50.30 −58:37:40.3 17.68 0.6 6503770402539968128 1.0
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018) TucII-033 22:51:08.33 −58:33:08.2 18.13 0.6 6503774693211601280 0.97
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018) TucII-052 22:50:51.64 −58:34:32.7 18.32 0.9 6503774246534991360 0.93
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018) TucII-078 22:50:41.07 −58:31:08.4 18.12 1.0 6503775689644031104 0.91
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018, 2020) TucII-206 22:54:36.66 −58:36:58.1 18.31 2.2 6491771187332385408 0.74
Tucana2 Chiti et al. (2018) TucII-203 22:50:08.92 −58:29:59.2 18.27 1.5 6503787337595350400 0.57
Tucana3 Hansen et al. (2017) J235532-593115 23:55:32.69 −59:31:15.1 15.46 1.6 6494298968859977216 1.0
Tucana3 Marshall et al. (2019) J235738-593612 23:57:38.51 −59:36:11.8 16.67 1.3 6494252892450764800 1.0
Tucana3 Marshall et al. (2019) J235550-593300 23:55:49.93 −59:32:59.7 16.94 1.1 6494251964737889536 1.0
UrsaMajor2 Frebel et al. (2010) S1 08:49:53.47 +63:08:21.6 17.86 0.8 1043842293206190848 0.96
UrsaMajor2 Frebel et al. (2010) S2 08:52:33.51 +63:05:01.1 17.37 0.6 1043920324172211584 0.96
UrsaMajor2 Frebel et al. (2010) S3 08:52:59.04 +63:05:54.6 16.43 0.7 1043873491848815104 1.0

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Footnotes

  • Note added in proof: omitted references in Table 2 include Kleyna et al. (2005; Ursa Major 1), Belokurov et al. (2009; Segue 2), Ji et al. (2016; Bootes 2), Fu et al. (2019; Crater 2), Gregory et al. (2020; Hercules), and Zoutendijk et al. (2020; Eridanus 2).

  • There are other ways to define contamination, for example, using the ratio of obvious contaminants to confirmed members, ${n}_{m,\mathrm{cont}}/{n}_{m}=173/5173=0.03$.

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10.3847/1538-3881/aba4ab