Considerations on how to investigate planes of satellite galaxies

Understand

The existence of a spatially thin, kinematically coherent Disk of Satellites (DoS) around the Milky Way (MW), is a problem that often garners vivacious debate in the literature or at scientific meetings.

• One of the most recent incarnations of this wrangle occurred with two papers by Maji et al, who argued that these structures "maybe a misinterpretation of the data".
• These claims are in stark contrast to previous works.
• Motivated by this and other recent publications on this problem, we discuss necessary considerations to make, observational effects to consider, and pitfalls to avoid when investigating satellite galaxy planes such as the MW's DoS.