Astronomy Colloquium

Stellar streams are remnants of dwarf satellite galaxies and globular clusters that were accreted by the Milky Way. The streams are promising tools for constraining the properties of the Galactic gravitational potential, but first we need to precisely measure their properties and understand their dynamical evolution. In this talk, I will present a followup study of the Ophiuchus stellar stream, a mysteriously short stream located about 5 kpc from the Galactic Center.  I will show how a probabilistic approach and a rich data set can be used to tightly constrain i) the distance, ii) the 3D kinematics, iii) the chemical abundance, iv) and the orbit of the Ophiuchus stream, and how these characteristics help unravel the mystery of the Ophiuchus stream.