Measurements of Tidal Tail Populations Designed to Optimize Their Use as Potential Probes.pdfVIP

The Evolution of Galaxies on Cosmological Timescales 8 ASP Conference Series, Vol. 3 ×10 , 1999 J. E. Beckman, and T. J. Mahoney, eds. Measurements of Tidal Tail Populations Designed to Optimize Their Use as Potential Probes Kathryn V. Johnston Van Vleck Observatory, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT 06457 0 0 0 Abstract. The launching of up to four astrometric missions in the next 2 decade will enable us to make measurements of stars in tidal streamers l from Galactic satellites of sufficient accuracy to place strong constraints u on the mass distribution in the Milky Way. In this paper we simulate J observations of debris populations in order to assess the required prop- 2 erties of any data set chosen to implement this experiment. We apply 1 our results to find the desired target properties of stars (e.g., accuracy 1 of velocity and proper motion measurements) associated with the dwarf v spheroidal satellites of the Milky Way. 0 6 1 7 0 1. Introduction 0 0 Stars lost from a satellite galaxy in orbit around the Milky Way will gradually / h drift ahead or behind their parent system to form streams of debris along its p orbit (Tremaine 1993; Johnston 1998). Assuming we know the phase-space co- - o ordinates of the parent satellite, the unique properties of tidal debris streams r