The Proper Motion of Draco II with HST using Multiple Reference Frames and Methodologies
Jack T. Warfield, Kevin A. McKinnon, Sangmo Tony Sohn, Nitya Kallivayalil, Alessandro Savino, Roeland P. van der Marel, Andrew B. Pace, Christopher T. Garling, Niusha Ahvazi, Paul Bennet, Roger E. Cohen, Matteo Correnti, Mark A. Fardal, Kristen B. W. McQuinn, Max J. B. Newman, Eduardo Vitral
arXiv:2510.24849v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We present proper motion (PM) measurements for Draco II, an ultra-faint dwarf satellite of the Milky Way. These PMs are measured using two epochs of Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (HST/ACS) imaging separated by a 7 year time baseline. Measuring PMs of low-luminosity systems is difficult due to the low number of member stars, requiring a precise inertial reference frame. We construct reference frames using three different sets of external sources: 1) stars with Gaia DR3 data, 2) stationary background galaxies, and 3) a combination of the two. We show that all three reference frames give consistent PM results. We find that for this sparse, low-luminosity regime including background galaxies into the reference frame improves our measurement by up to $sim2times$ versus using only Gaia astrometric data. Using 301 background galaxies as a reference frame, we find that Draco II’s systemic PM is $(mu_{alpha}^*, mu_{delta}) = (1.043pm0.029, 0.879pm0.028)$ mas/yr, which is the most precise measurement of the three we present in this paper.arXiv:2510.24849v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We present proper motion (PM) measurements for Draco II, an ultra-faint dwarf satellite of the Milky Way. These PMs are measured using two epochs of Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys (HST/ACS) imaging separated by a 7 year time baseline. Measuring PMs of low-luminosity systems is difficult due to the low number of member stars, requiring a precise inertial reference frame. We construct reference frames using three different sets of external sources: 1) stars with Gaia DR3 data, 2) stationary background galaxies, and 3) a combination of the two. We show that all three reference frames give consistent PM results. We find that for this sparse, low-luminosity regime including background galaxies into the reference frame improves our measurement by up to $sim2times$ versus using only Gaia astrometric data. Using 301 background galaxies as a reference frame, we find that Draco II’s systemic PM is $(mu_{alpha}^*, mu_{delta}) = (1.043pm0.029, 0.879pm0.028)$ mas/yr, which is the most precise measurement of the three we present in this paper.