Slippery evidence on the Galaxy's invisible heavy halo

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Abstract
New measurements have been made of the velocities of carbon stars in the Carina and other dwarf galaxies, and of the planetary nebula in Fornax. Carina, previously thought to be the Galaxy's fastest moving satellite, is shown instead to be moving very slowly. Evidence previously assembled on velocities of objects in the outer parts of the Galaxy is re-examined in the light of these and other new data. The new result for Carina combined with the revised velocity of Sculptor (and a new distance reported for Palomar 1) removes some of the evidence for a heavy halo, but more remains to be re-investigated. However, assuming the velocities are not preferentially oriented across the line-of-sight, the best modern data on all the nine satellites of the Galaxy now yield a total mass out to about 100 kpc of (2.6 ± 0.8) × 1011M⊙.

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