Sagittarius, a dwarf spheroidal galaxy without dark matter?
/ Authors
/ Abstract
The existence of dwarf spheroidal galaxies with high internal velocity dispersions orbiting in the Milky Way raises questions about their dark matter content and lifetime. In this paper, we present an alternative solution to the dark matter dom- inated satellites proposed by Ibata & Lewis (1998) for the Sagit- tarius dwarf galaxy. We performed simulations of two kinds of N-body satellites: the first models (f-models) could correspond to satellites with high dark matter content and they represent initially isolated models. The second models (s-models) have either low or negligible dark matter content and they are con- structed in a tidal field. In spite of being on the same orbits, the s-models are able to produce a better agreement with some observational constraints concerning Sagittarius. From our sim- ulations, we can also infer that Sagittarius is in the process of being disrupted.
Journal: Astronomy and Astrophysics