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We present results from a resolved stellar population search for dwarf satellite galaxies of six nearby (D $, Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures. Accepted to MNRAS. Comments welcomed

We present deep $g$- and $r$-band Magellan/Megacam photometry of two dwarf galaxy candidates discovered in the Dark Energy Survey (DES), Grus I and Indus II (DES J2038-4609). For the case of Grus I, we resolved the main sequence turn-off (MSTO) and $\sim 2$ mags below it. The MSTO can be seen at $g_0\sim 24$ with a photometric uncertainty of $0.03$ mag. We show Grus I to be consistent with an old, metal-poor ($\sim 13.3$ Gyr, [Fe/H]$\sim-1.9$) dwarf galaxy. We derive updated distance and structural parameters for Grus I using this deep, uniform, wide-field data set. We find an azimuthally averaged half-light radius more than two times larger ($\sim 151^{+21}_{-31}$ pc; $\sim 4.^{\prime} 16^{+0.54}_{-0.74}$) and an absolute $V$-band magnitude $\sim-4.1$ that is $\sim 1$ magnitude brighter than previous studies. We obtain updated distance, ellipticity, and centroid parameters which are in agreement with other studies within uncertainties. Although our photometry of Indus II is $\sim 2-3$ magnitudes deeper than the DES Y1 Public release, we find no coherent stellar population at its reported location. The original detection was located in an incomplete region of sky in the DES Y2Q1 data set and was flagged due to potential blue horizontal branch member stars. The best fit isochrone parameters are physically inconsistent with both dwarf galaxies and globular clusters. We conclude that Indus II is likely a false-positive, flagged due to a chance alignment of stars along the line of sight., 16 pages, 8 figures; submitted to ApJ

We have used hydrodynamical simulations to model the formation of the closest giant elliptical galaxy, Centaurus A. We find that a single major merger event with a mass ratio up to 1.5, and which has happened ~2 Gyr ago, is able to reproduce many of its properties, including galaxy kinematics, the inner gas disk, stellar halo ages and metallicities, and numerous faint features observed in the halo. The elongated halo shape is mostly made of progenitor residuals deposited by the merger, which also contribute to stellar shells observed in the Centaurus A halo. The current model also reproduces the measured Planetary Nebulae line of sight velocity and their velocity dispersion. Models with small mass ratio and relatively low gas fraction result in a de Vaucouleurs profile distribution, which is consistent with observations and model expectations. A recent merger left imprints in the age distribution that are consistent with the young stellar and Globular Cluster populations (2-4 Gyrs) found within the halo. We conclude that even if not all properties of Centaurus A have been accurately reproduced, a recent major merger has likely occurred to form the Centaurus A galaxy as we observe it at present day., Comment: Accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,13 pages, 9 figures

We investigate the case for environmental quenching of the Fornax-mass satellite DDO 113, which lies only 9 kpc in projection from its host, the Large-Magellanic-Cloud-mass galaxy NGC 4214. DDO 113 was quenched about 1 Gyr ago and is virtually gas-free, while analogs in the field are predominantly star-forming and gas-rich. We use deep imaging obtained with the Large Binocular Telescope to show that DDO 113 exhibits no evidence of tidal disruption to a surface brightness of $\mu_V\sim29$ mag $\text{arcsec}^{-2}$, based on both unresolved emission and resolved stars. Mass-analogs of DDO 113 in Illustris-1 with similar hosts, small projected separations, and no significant tidal stripping first fell into their host halo 2--6 Gyr ago, showing that tidal features (or lack thereof) can be used to constrain infall times in systems where there are few other constraints on the orbit of the satellite. With the infall time setting the clock for environmental quenching mechanisms, we investigate the plausibility of several such mechanisms. We find that strangulation, the cessation of cold gas inflows, is likely the dominant quenching mechanism for DDO 113, requiring a time-averaged mass-loading factor of $\eta=6-11$ for star-formation-driven outflows that is consistent with theoretical and observational constraints. Motivated by recent numerical work, we connect DDO 113's strangulation to the presence of a cool circumgalactic medium (CGM) around NGC 4214. This discovery shows that the CGM of low-mass galaxies can affect their satellites significantly and motivates further work on understanding the baryon cycle in low-mass galaxies., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, to be submitted to MNRAS

The ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Hercules has an extremely elongated morphology with both photometric overdensities and kinematic members at large radii, suggesting that it may be tidally disrupting due to a previous close encounter with the Milky Way. To explain its observational peculiarities, we present a deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging study of Hercules and its surrounding regions and investigate its tidal history through a careful search for a distance gradient along its stretched body. Our off-center HST data clearly resolve a main sequence, showing that the stellar extension seen along the major-axis of Hercules is genuine, not a clump of background galaxies. Utilizing Gaia DR2 data, we clean the region around Hercules of field contamination, and find four new plausible member stars, all of which are located at the outskirts of the dwarf galaxy. We update the distance to Hercules, and find $130.6\pm1.2$ kpc ($m-M=20.58\pm0.02$) for the main body, which is consistent with earlier estimates in the literature. While we find no conclusive evidence for a distance gradient, our work demonstrates that constraining a distance gradient in such a faint system is not trivial, and the possible thickness of the dwarf along the line of sight and field contamination make it harder to make decisive conclusions even with these high-precision data. Future studies coupled with tailored theoretical models are needed to understand the true nature of Hercules and of tidal distortion observables in ultra-faint galaxies in general., Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, submitted to ApJ

We have obtained deep Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging of 19 dwarf galaxy candidates in the vicinity of M101. Advanced Camera for Surveys HST photometry for 2 of these objects showed resolved stellar populations and Tip of the Red Giant Branch derived distances consistent with M101 group membership. The other 17 were found to have no resolved stellar populations, meaning they are background low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies. It is notable that many LSB objects which had previously been assumed to be M101 group members based on projection have been shown to be background objects, indicating the need for future diffuse dwarf surveys to be careful in drawing conclusions about group membership without robust distance estimates. In this work we update the satellite luminosity function of M101 based on the presence of these new objects down to M_V=-8.2. M101 is a sparsely populated system with only 9 satellites down to M_V~-8, as compared to 26 for M31 and 24.5\pm7.7 for the median local Milky Way (MW)-mass host. This makes M101 the sparsest group probed to this depth, though M94 is even sparser to the depth it has been examined (M_V=-9.1). M101 and M94 share several properties that mark them as unusual compared to the other local MW-mass galaxies examined: they have a sparse satellite population but also have high star forming fractions among these satellites; such properties are also found in the galaxies examined as part of the SAGA survey. We suggest that these properties appear to be tied to the galactic environment, with more isolated galaxies showing sparse satellite populations which are more likely to have had recent star formation, while those in dense environments have more satellites which tend to have no recent star formation. Overall our results show a level of halo-to-halo scatter between galaxies of similar mass that is larger than is predicted in the \LambdaCDM model., Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, accepted by ApJ

Full list of authors: Drlica-Wagner, A.; Carlin, J. L.; Nidever, D. L.; Ferguson, P. S.; Kuropatkin, N.; Adamów, M.; Cerny, W.; Choi, Y.; Esteves, J. H.; Martínez-Vázquez, C. E.; Mau, S.; Miller, A. E.; Mutlu-Pakdil, B.; Neilsen, E. H.; Olsen, K. A. G.; Pace, A. B.; Riley, A. H.; Sakowska, J. D.; Sand, D. J.; Santana-Silva, L.; Tollerud, E. J.; Tucker, D. L.; Vivas, A. K.; Zaborowski, E.; Zenteno, A.; Abbott, T. M. C.; Allam, S.; Bechtol, K.; Bell, C. P. M.; Bell, E. F.; Bilaji, P.; Bom, C. R.; Carballo-Bello, J. A.; Crnojević, D.; Cioni, M. -R. L.; Diaz-Ocampo, A.; de Boer, T. J. L.; Erkal, D.; Gruendl, R. A.; Hernandez-Lang, D.; Hughes, A. K.; James, D. J.; Johnson, L. C.; Li, T. S.; Mao, Y. -Y.; Martínez-Delgado, D.; Massana, P.; McNanna, M.; Morgan, R.; Nadler, E. O.; Noël, N. E. D.; Palmese, A.; Peter, A. H. G.; Rykoff, E. S.; Sánchez, J.; Shipp, N.; Simon, J. D.; Smercina, A.; Soares-Santos, M.; Stringfellow, G. S.; Tavangar, K.; van der Marel, R. P.; Walker, A. R.; Wechsler, R. H.; Wu, J. F.; Yanny, B. s; Fitzpatrick, M.; Huang, L.; Jacques, A.; Nikutta, R.; Scott, A., The DECam Local Volume Exploration survey (DELVE) is a 126-night survey program on the 4 m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. DELVE seeks to understand the characteristics of faint satellite galaxies and other resolved stellar substructures over a range of environments in the Local Volume. DELVE will combine new DECam observations with archival DECam data to cover ∼15,000 deg2 of high Galactic latitude (|b| > 10°) southern sky to a 5σ depth of g, r, i, z ∼ 23.5 mag. In addition, DELVE will cover a region of ∼2200 deg2 around the Magellanic Clouds to a depth of g, r, i ∼ 24.5 mag and an area of ∼135 deg2 around four Magellanic analogs to a depth of g, i ∼ 25.5 mag. Here, we present an overview of the DELVE program and progress to date. We also summarize the first DELVE public data release (DELVE DR1), which provides point-source and automatic aperture photometry for ∼520 million astronomical sources covering ∼5000 deg2 of the southern sky to a 5σ point-source depth of g = 24.3 mag, r = 23.9 mag, i = 23.3 mag, and z = 22.8 mag. DELVE DR1 is publicly available via the NOIRLab Astro Data Lab science platform. © 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved., The DELVE project is partially supported by Fermilab LDRD project L2019-011 and the NASA Fermi Guest Investigator Program Cycle 9 No. 91201. This work is supported by the Visiting Scholars Award Program of the Universities Research Association. A.B.P. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1813881. This research received support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant No. NSF DGE-1656518 through the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship received by S.M. J.L.C. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1816196. J.D.S. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1714873. S.R.M. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1909497. D.J.S. acknowledges support from NSF grants AST-1821967 and AST-1813708. D.M.D. acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Centre of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia (SEV-2017-0709). C.P.M.B. and M.-R.L. C. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 682115). This project used data obtained with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), which was constructed by the Dark Energy Survey (DES) Collaboration. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the DOE and NSF (USA), MISE (Spain), STFC (UK), HEFCE (UK), NCSA (UIUC), KICP (U. Chicago), CCAPP (Ohio State), MIFPA (Texas A&M University), CNPQ, FAPERJ, FINEP (Brazil), MINECO (Spain), DFG (Germany), and the collaborating institutions in the Dark Energy Survey, which are Argonne Lab, UC Santa Cruz, University of Cambridge, CIEMAT-Madrid, University of Chicago, University College London, DES-Brazil Consortium, University of Edinburgh, ETH Zurich, Fermilab, University of Illinois, ICE (IEEC-CSIC), IFAE Barcelona, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, LMU Munchen, and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, University of Michigan, NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, University of Nottingham, Ohio State University, OzDES Membership Consortium University of Pennsylvania, University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Lab, Stanford University, University of Sussex, and Texas A&M University. 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. Based on observations at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, NSF's National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (2019A-0305; PI: Drlica-Wagner), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. This manuscript has been authored by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, under contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11359 with the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government.