Gaia DR2 candidate RR Lyrae of Sgr stream & dwarf

However, assigning membership and obtaining the phase-space distribution of the stars that form the tails is quite challenging. Our goal is to produce a catalogue of RR Lyrae stars of Sgr and obtain an empiric measurement of the trends along the stream in sky position, distance and tangential velocities.

We generate two initial samples from the Gaia DR2 RR Lyrae catalogue: one, selecting only the stars within +/-20{deg} of the orbital plane of Sagittarius (Strip) and the other, the result of applying the Pole Count Map (nGC3) algorithm. We then use the model-independent, deterministic method developed in this work to remove most of the contamination by detecting and isolating the stream in distance and proper motions. The output is two empiric catalogues: the Strip sample (higher-completeness, lower-purity) which contains 11677 stars, and the nGC3 sample (higher-purity, lower-completeness) with 6608 stars.