We present imaging of the recently discovered Hercules Milky Way satellite
and its surrounding regions to study its structure, star formation history and
to thoroughly search for signs of disruption. We robustly determine the
distance, luminosity, size and morphology of Hercules utilizing a bootstrap
approach to characterize our uncertainties. We derive a distance to Hercules of
133±6 kpc via a comparison to empirical and theoretical isochrones. As
previous studies have found, Hercules is very elongated, with
ϵ=0.67±0.03 and a half light radius of rh≃230 pc. Using
the color magnitude fitting package StarFISH, we determine that Hercules is old
(>12 Gyr) and metal poor ([Fe/H]∼−2.0), with a spread in metallicity, in
agreement with previous spectroscopic work. We infer a total absolute magnitude
of MV=−5.3±0.4. Our innovative search for external Hercules structure both
in the plane of the sky and along the line of sight yields some evidence that
Hercules is embedded in a larger stream of stars. A clear stellar extension is
seen to the Northwest with several additional candidate stellar overdensities
along the position angle of Hercules out to ∼35' (∼1.3 kpc). While
the association of any of the individual stellar overdensities with Hercules is
difficult to determine, we do show that the summed color magnitude diagram of
all three is consistent with Hercules' stellar population. Finally, we estimate
that any change in the distance to Hercules across its face is at most ∼6
kpc; and the data are consistent with Hercules being at the same distance
throughout.Comment: 50 pages, 15 figures, submitted to the Astrophysical Journa