The Astrophysical Journal, 859:31 (32pp), 2018 May 20 https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aabfbb © 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. The Profile of the Galactic Halo from Pan-STARRS1 3π RR Lyrae Nina Hernitschek1 , Judith G. Cohen1 , Hans-Walter Rix2 , Branimir Sesar2 , Nicolas F. Martin2,3 , Eugene Magnier4 , Richard Wainscoat4 , Nick Kaiser4 , John L. Tonry4 , Rolf-Peter Kudritzki4, Klaus Hodapp4 , Ken Chambers4 , Heather Flewelling4 , and William Burgett5 1 Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA;
[email protected] 2 Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Königstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany 3 Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, UMR 7550, 11 rue de l’Université, F-6700 Strasbourg, France 4 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 5 GMTO Corporation (Pasadena), 465 N. Halstead Street, Suite 250, Pasadena, CA 91107, USA Received 2017 November 1; revised 2018 March 28; accepted 2018 April 18; published 2018 May 21 Abstract We characterize the spatial density of the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) sample of Rrab stars to study the properties of the old Galactic stellar halo. This sample, containing 44,403 sources, spans galactocentric radii of 0.55 kpcRgc141 kpc with a distance precision of 3% and thus is able to trace the halo out to larger distances than most previous studies. After excising stars that are attributed to dense regions such as stellar streams, the Galactic disk and bulge, and halo globular clusters, the sample contains ∼11,000 sources within 20 kpcRgc131 kpc. We then apply forward modeling using Galactic halo profile models with a sample selection function.