Feeling the pull, a study of natural Galactic accelerometers. I:
  photometry of the delicate stellar stream of the Palomar 5 globular cluster
  We present an analysis of wide-field photometric surveys of the Palomar 5
globular cluster and its stellar stream, based on g- and r-band measures
together with narrow-band DDO51 photometry. In this first study, we use the
deep (g,r) data to measure the incidence of gaps and peaks along the stream.
Examining the star-counts profile of the stream plus contaminating populations,
we find no evidence for significant under-densities, and find only a single
significant over-density. This is at odds with earlier studies based on
matched-filter maps derived from shallower SDSS data if the contaminating
population possesses plausible spatial properties. The lack of substantial
sub-structure along the stream may be used in future dynamical simulations to
examine the incidence of dark matter sub-halos in the Galactic halo. We also
present a measurement of the relative distances along the stream which we use
to create the deepest wide-field map of this system to date.
