“GALAXY,” DEFINED

A growing number of low luminosity and low surface brightness astronomical objects challenge traditional notions of both galaxies and star clusters. To address this challenge, we propose a definition of galaxy that does not depend on a cold dark matter model of the universe: a galaxy is a gravitationally bound collection of stars whose properties cannot be explained by a combination of baryons and Newton's laws of gravity. To explore the utility of using the [Fe/H] spread as a complementary diagnostic, we use published spectroscopic [Fe/H] measurements of 16 Milky Way dwarfs and 24 globular clusters to uniformly calculate their [Fe/H] spreads and associated uncertainties. We suggest several measurements that may assist the future classification of massive globular clusters, ultra-compact dwarfs, and ultra-faint galaxies. Our galaxy definition is designed to be independent of the details of current observations and models, while our proposed diagnostics can be refined or replaced as our understanding of the universe evolves.