Eight Ultra-faint Galaxy Candidates Discovered in Year Two of the Dark Energy Survey

Understand

We report the discovery of eight new ultra-faint dwarf galaxy candidates in the second year of optical imaging data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

• Six of these candidates are detected at high confidence, while two lower-confidence candidates are identified in regions of non-uniform survey coverage.
• The new stellar systems are found by three independent automated search techniques and are identified as overdensities of stars, consistent with the isochrone and luminosity function of an old and metal-poor simple stellar population.
• The new systems are faint (Mv > -4.7 mag) and span a range of physical sizes (17 pc < $r_{1/2}$ < 181 pc) and heliocentric distances (25 kpc < D < 214 kpc).