Unveiling M33’s Hidden Merger History: A Potential Population of Star Clusters on Retrograde Orbits

We report the discovery of a possible sub-population of stellar clusters that appear to follow retrograde orbits around the third largest galaxy in the Local Group, M33 (Triangulum). This spiral disk galaxy has apparently had a mostly quiescent existence, although recent discoveries, particularly of a pronounced warp in the gas and stellar disk, suggest that M33’s relatively quiet past was interrupted at least once by a dynamical interaction with another galaxy. We suggest that this sub-population provides evidence of accretion of one or more dwarf galaxies in M33’s history. We estimate a lower limit for the accreted halo virial mass of Mvir ∼ (7 ± 3) × 1010 M⊙, accounting for about 10% of the virial mass in the halo of M33 that has an accretion origin. We propose one of these accretion events as the source of the observed warp in M33’s disk.