Streams on FIRE: Populations of Detectable Stellar Streams in the Milky Way and FIRE

Understand

We present the first detailed study comparing the populations of stellar streams in cosmological simulations to observed Milky Way dwarf galaxy streams.

• In particular, we compare streams identified around Milky Way analogs in the FIRE-2 simulations to stellar streams observed by the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5).
• For an accurate comparison between the stream populations, we produce mock Dark Energy Survey (DES) observations of the FIRE streams and estimate the detectability of their tidal tails and progenitors.
• The number and stellar mass distributions of detectable stellar streams is consistent between observations and simulations.