Searches for New Milky Way Satellites from the First Two Years of Data of the Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey: Discovery of Cetus~III

We present the results from a search for new Milky Way (MW) satellites from the first two years of data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) $\sim 300$~deg$^2$ and report the discovery of a highly compelling ultra-faint dwarf galaxy candidate in Cetus. This is the second ultra-faint dwarf we have discovered after Virgo~I reported in our previous paper. This satellite, Cetus~III, has been identified as a statistically significant (10.7$\sigma$) spatial overdensity of star-like objects, which are selected from a relevant isochrone filter designed for a metal-poor and old stellar population. This stellar system is located at a heliocentric distance of 251$^{+24}_{-11}$~kpc with a most likely absolute magnitude of $M_V = -2.4 \pm 0.6$~mag estimated from a Monte Carlo analysis. Cetus~III is extended with a half-light radius of $r_h = 90^{+42}_{-17}$~pc, suggesting that this is a faint dwarf satellite in the MW located beyond the detection limit of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Further spectroscopic studies are needed to assess the nature of this stellar system. We also revisit and update the parameters for Virgo~I finding $M_V = -0.33^{+0.75}_{-0.87}$~mag and $r_h = 47^{+19}_{-13}$~pc. Using simulations of $\Lambda$-dominated cold dark matter models, we predict that we should find one or two new MW satellites from $\sim 300$~deg$^2$ HSC-SSP data, in rough agreement with the discovery rate so far. The further survey and completion of HSC-SSP over $\sim 1,400$~deg$^2$ will provide robust insights into the missing satellites problem.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ special issu

A New Milky Way Satellite Discovered In The Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey

We report the discovery of a new ultra-faint dwarf satellite companion of the Milky Way based on the early survey data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program. This new satellite, Virgo I, which is located in the constellation of Virgo, has been identified as a statistically significant (5.5 sigma) spatial overdensity of star-like objects with a well-defined main sequence and red giant branch in their color-magnitude diagram. The significance of this overdensity increases to 10.8 sigma when the relevant isochrone filter is adopted for the search. Based on the distribution of the stars around the likely main sequence turn-off at r ~ 24 mag, the distance to Virgo I is estimated as 87 kpc, and its most likely absolute magnitude calculated from a Monte Carlo analysis is M_V = -0.8 +/- 0.9 mag. This stellar system has an extended spatial distribution with a half-light radius of 38 +12/-11 pc, which clearly distinguishes it from a globular cluster with comparable luminosity. Thus, Virgo I is one of the faintest dwarf satellites known and is located beyond the reach of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. This demonstrates the power of this survey program to identify very faint dwarf satellites. This discovery of VirgoI is based only on about 100 square degrees of data, thus a large number of faint dwarf satellites are likely to exist in the outer halo of the Milky Way.Comment: typos are corrected, 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

The Hyper Suprime-Cam Software Pipeline

In this paper, we describe the optical imaging data processing pipeline developed for the Subaru Telescope's Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) instrument. The HSC Pipeline builds on the prototype pipeline being developed by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope's Data Management system, adding customizations for HSC, large-scale processing capabilities, and novel algorithms that have since been reincorporated into the LSST codebase. While designed primarily to reduce HSC Subaru Strategic Program (SSP) data, it is also the recommended pipeline for reducing general-observer HSC data. The HSC pipeline includes high level processing steps that generate coadded images and science-ready catalogs as well as low-level detrending and image characterizations.Comment: 39 pages, 21 figures, 2 tables. Submitted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japa

Star/Galaxy Separation in Hyper Suprime-Cam and Mapping the Milky Way with Star Counts

We study the problem of separating stars and galaxies in the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) multi-band imaging data at high galactic latitudes. We show that the current separation technique implemented in the HSC pipeline is unable to produce samples of stars with $i \gtrsim 24$ without a significant contamination from galaxies ($\gtrsim 50\%$). We study various methods for measuring extendedness in HSC with simulated and real data and find that there are a number of available techniques that give nearly optimal results; the extendedness measure HSC is currently using is among these. We develop a star/galaxy separation method for HSC based on the Extreme Deconvolution (XD) algorithm that uses colors and extendedness simultaneously, and show that with it we can generate samples of faint stars keeping contamination from galaxies under control to $i \leq 25$. We apply our star/galaxy separation method to carry out a preliminary study of the structure of the Milky Way (MW) with main sequence (MS) stars using photometric parallax relations derived for the HSC photometric system. We show that it will be possible to generate a tomography of the MW stellar halo to galactocentric radii $\sim 100 \textrm{ kpc}$ with $\sim 10^6$ MS stars in the HSC Wide layer once the survey has been completed. We report two potential detections of the Sagittarius tidal stream with MS stars in the XMM and GAMA15 fields at $\approx 20 \textrm{ kpc}$ and $\approx 40 \textrm{ kpc}$ respectively