Perseus I and the NGC 3109 association in the context of the Local Group dwarf galaxy structures
The recently discovered dwarf galaxy Perseus I appears to be associated with the dominant plane of non-satellite galaxies in the Local Group (LG). We predict its velocity dispersion and those of the other isolated dwarf spheroidals Cetus and Tucana to be 6.5, 8.2 and 5.5 km s −1 , respectively. The NGC 3109 association, including the recently discovered dwarf galaxy Leo P, aligns with the dwarf galaxy structures in the LG such that all known nearby non-satellite galaxies in the northern Galactic hemisphere lie in a common thin plane (rms height 53 kpc; diameter 1.2 Mpc). This plane has an orientation similar to the preferred orbital plane of the Milky Way (MW) satellites in the vast polar structure. Five of seven of these northern galaxies were identified as possible backsplash objects, even though only about one is expected from cosmological simulations. This may pose a problem, or instead the search for local backsplash galaxies might be identifying ancient tidal dwarf galaxies expelled in a past major galaxy encounter. The NGC 3109 association supports the notion that material preferentially falls towards the MW from the Galactic south and recedes towards the north, as if the MW were moving through a stream of dwarf galaxies.