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Stellar tidal streams

Tidal streams give evidence to the violent merging history of galaxies: Small dwarf galaxies are encircling their host galaxy and are torn apart by tidal forces. The lost matter forms a leading and trailing stream: ahead of the dwarf galaxy and behind it.
The pictures show that stellar streams are actually forming in cosmological simulations and lie nicely on top of the dark matter stream - just as expected.

Technical details
The pictures were created using data from the Constrained Simulation of the Local Group (WMAP3) with a resolution of 4096^3 particles. Three host halos were considered: the  simulated counterparts to the Milky Way, M31 and M33.

Halos and subhalos were found using the Amiga Halo Finder (AHF, Knollmann&Knebe 2009).
The pictures themselves are generated using IDL.

Each picture shows the projection of the particle distribution to the x-y-plane of the simulation box, particles in low density regions (dark colors) are plotted first and overplotted by particles in high density regions (bright colors).