Origins of the Evil Eye: M64's Stellar Halo Reveals the Recent Accretion of an SMC-mass Satellite

M64, often called the “Evil Eye” galaxy, is unique among local galaxies. Beyond its dramatic, dusty nucleus, it also hosts an outer gas disk that counter-rotates relative to its stars. The mass of this outer disk is comparable to the gas content of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), prompting the ide...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:	The Astrophysical Journal Letters
Main Authors:	Adam Smercina, Eric F. Bell, Paul A. Price, Jeremy Bailin, Julianne J. Dalcanton, Roelof S. de Jong, Richard D’Souza, Katya Gozman, In Sung Jang, Antonela Monachesi, David Nidever, Colin T. Slater
Format:	Article
Language:	English
Published:	IOP Publishing 2023-01-01
Subjects:	Galaxy stellar halos Galaxy mergers Stellar populations
Online Access:	https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/acd5d1

Similar Items

Saying Hallo to M94's Stellar Halo: Investigating the Accretion History of the Largest Pseudobulge Host in the Local Universe
by: Katya Gozman, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

A Timeline of the M81 Group: Properties of the Extended Structures of M82 and NGC 3077
by: Benjamin N. Velguth, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

Streams, Shells, and Substructures in the Accretion-built Stellar Halo of NGC 300
by: Catherine E. Fielder, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Progenitor Diversity in the Accreted Stellar Halos of Milky Way–like Galaxies
by: Sy-Yun Pu, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Detection of the Actinide Th in an r-process-enhanced Star with Accretion Origin
by: Qianfan Xing, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

The Growth of Galaxy Stellar Haloes over 0.2 ≤ z ≤ 1.1
by: Devin J. Williams, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Resolved SPLASH Chemodynamics in Andromeda’s PHAT Stellar Halo and Disk: On the Nature of the Inner Halo along the Major Axis
by: Ivanna Escala, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Detection of Accretion Shelves Out to the Virial Radius of a Low-mass Galaxy with JWST
by: Charlie Conroy, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

Detection of a Spatially Extended Stellar Population in M33: A Shallow Stellar Halo?
by: Itsuki Ogami, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

Cosmological Simulations of Stellar Halos with Gaia Sausage–Enceladus Analogs: Two Sausages, One Bun?
by: Dylan Folsom, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Exploration of Halo Substructures in Integrals-of-motion Space with Gaia Data Release 3
by: Haoyang Liu, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

The Outskirt Stellar Mass of Low-redshift Massive Galaxies Is an Excellent Halo Mass Proxy in Illustris/IllustrisTNG Simulations
by: Shuo Xu, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

TREX: Kinematic Characterization of a High-dispersion Intermediate-age Stellar Component in M33
by: L. R. Cullinane, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Figuring Out Gas and Galaxies in Enzo (FOGGIE). VII. The (Dis)assembly of Stellar Halos
by: Anna C. Wright, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

The Galactic Bulge Exploration. VI. Gaia Enceladus/Sausage RR Lyrae Stars in the Inner-central Stellar Halo of the Milky Way
by: Andrea Kunder, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Elemental Abundances in M31: Individual and Coadded Spectroscopic [Fe/H] and [α/Fe] throughout the M31 Halo with SPLASH
by: J. Leigh Wojno, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Visit Nearby Halo Substructures Using LAMOST DR9 MRS Data
by: Xin-Zhe Tang, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

How Do the Velocity Anisotropies of Halo Stars, Dark Matter, and Satellite Galaxies Depend on Host Halo Properties?
by: Jiaxin He, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

What Is Missing from the Local Stellar Halo?
by: Katherine Sharpe, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

Investigation of Substructures of the Inner Halo Using the StarGO Algorithm with APOGEE DR17
by: Zhongcheng Li, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Cosmological Predictions for Minor Axis Stellar Density Profiles in the Inner Regions of Milky Way–mass Galaxies
by: Madeline Lucey, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Distant Echoes of the Milky Way’s Last Major Merger
by: Vedant Chandra, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

HALO7D. III. Chemical Abundances of Milky Way Halo Stars from Medium-resolution Spectra
by: Kevin A. McKinnon, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Metal-poor Stars in the MW Disk: Resonant Cooling of Vertical Oscillations of Halo Stars in Barred Galaxies
by: Xingchen Li, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

The Extended Stellar Distribution in the Outskirts of the Ursa Minor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
by: Kyosuke S. Sato, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

The Progenitor of the Peculiar Galaxy NGC 3077
by: Sakurako Okamoto, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

The GD-1 Stellar Stream Perturber as a Core-collapsed Self-interacting Dark Matter Halo
by: Xingyu Zhang, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

The Observable Properties of Galaxy Accretion Events in Milky Way–like Galaxies in the FIRE-2 Cosmological Simulations
by: Danny Horta, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

A Census of Dwarf Galaxy Satellites around LMC-mass Galaxy NGC 2403
by: Jeffrey L. Carlin, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

Preliminary Study of Dark-matter-dominated Systems: Further Analysis for Galactic Dark Matter Halos with Pressure
by: A. Aceña, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

New Velocity Measurements of NGC 5128 Globular Clusters Out to 130 kpc: Outer Halo Kinematics, Substructure, and Dynamics
by: Allison K. Hughes, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Chemical Components in the Virgo Overdensity and Hercules–Aquila Cloud: Hints of More than One Merger Event in GSE-like Debris
by: Haoyang Liu, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Identifying Galactic Substructures in 5D Space Using All-sky RR Lyrae Stars in Gaia DR3
by: Shenglan Sun, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Milky Way Mass Through Escape Velocity Curve from LAMOST K Giants
by: Yin Wu, et al.
Published: (2025-01-01)

Chemical Diversity on Small Scales: Abundance Analysis of the Tucana V Ultrafaint Dwarf Galaxy
by: Terese T. Hansen, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

The Escape Velocity Profile of the Milky Way from Gaia DR3
by: Cian Roche, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

A New Tidal Stream Discovered in Gaia DR3
by: Hao Tian, et al.
Published: (2024-01-01)

Detection of Multiple Phase Space Overdensities of GSE Stars by Orbit Integration
by: Wenbo Wu, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Chemodynamically Tagged Groups of CEMP Stars in the Halo of the Milky Way. I. Untangling the Origins of CEMP-s and CEMP-no Stars
by: Joseph Zepeda, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)

Impact of Galaxy Mergers on Stellar Population Profiles of Early-type Galaxies
by: Yongmin Yoon, et al.
Published: (2023-01-01)