The Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy (Sgr dSph), also known as the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy (Sgr dE or Sag DEG), is an elliptical loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It contains four globular clusters in its main body, with the brightest of them — NGC 6715 (M54) — known well before the discovery of the galaxy itself in 1994. Sgr dSph is roughly 10,000 light-years in diameter, and is currently about 80,380 light-years from Earth, travelling in a polar orbit (an orbit passing over the Milky Way's galactic poles) at a distance of about 50,000 light-years from the core of the Milky Way (about one third of the distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud). In its looping, spiraling path, it has passed through the plane of the Milky Way several times in the past. In 2018, the Gaia project of the European Space Agency showed that Sgr dSph had caused perturbations in a set of stars near the Milky Way's core, causing unexpected rippling movements of the stars triggered when it moved through the Milky Way between 300 and 900 million years ago.
Features Officially discovered in 1994, by Rodrigo Ibata, Mike Irwin, and Gerry Gilmore, Sgr dSph was immediately recognized as being the nearest known neighbor to the Milky Way at the time. (The disputed Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy, discovered in 2003, might be the actual nearest neighbor.) Although it is one of the closest companion galaxies to the Milky Way, the main parent cluster is on the opposite side of the Galactic Center from Earth, and consequently is very faint, although covering a large area of the sky. Sgr dSph appears to be an older galaxy with little interstellar dust, composed largely of Population II stars, older and metal-poor, as compared to the Milky Way. No neutral hydrogen gas related to Sgr dSph has been found. Further discoveries by astrophysics teams from both the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, drawing upon the 2MASS Two-Micron All Sky Infrared Survey data, revealed the entire loop-shaped structure. In 2003 with the aid of infrared telescopes and super computers, Steven Majewski, Michael Skrutskie, and Martin Weinberg were able to help create a new star map, picking out the full Sagittarius Dwarf presence, position, and looping shape from the mass of background stars and finding this smaller galaxy to be at a near right angle to the plane of the Milky Way.
Globular clusters
Sgr dSph has at least nine known globular clusters. One, M 54, appears to reside at its core, while three others reside within the main body of the galaxy: Terzan 7, Terzan 8 and Arp 2. Additionally, Palomar 12, Whiting 1, NGC 2419, NGC 4147, and NGC 5634 are found within its extended stellar streams. However, this is an unusually low number of globular clusters, and an analysis of VVV and Gaia EDR3 data has found at least twenty more. The newly discovered globular clusters tend to be more metal-rich than previously known globular clusters.
Metallicity Sgr dSph has multiple stellar populations, ranging in age from the oldest globular clusters (almost as old as the universe itself) to trace populations as young as several hundred million years (mya). It also exhibits an age-metallicity relationship, in that its old populations are metal poor ([Fe/H] = −1.6 ± 0.1) while its youngest populations have super-solar abundances.
Geometry and dynamics
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
