The Motions of the Magellanic Clouds About the Milky Way

Details The Motions of the Magellanic Clouds About the Milky Way The Motions of the Magellanic Clouds About the Milky Way

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006aas...20919904k&link_type=abstract

2007 AAS/AAPT Joint Meeting, American Astronomical Society Meeting 209, #199.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society,

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

It is expected from current models of hierarchical structure formation that the interaction between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC & SMC) and the Milky Way (MW) will have played an important role in the dynamical evolution of the MW's outer parts. A major uncertainty in decoding this evolution is the space velocity of the Clouds and thus their orbital motion. While the radial velocities of the Clouds have been measured to high precision, the velocity transverse to the line of sight (the proper motion) has been harder to constrain. I will present a project that has allowed us to determine the systemic proper motions of the Clouds to better than 5% accuracy for the LMC, and 15% for the SMC, using two epochs of HST/ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) data and just a 2 year baseline. The result for the LMC is the most accurate proper motion measurement for any MW satellite thus far. I will also discuss the conclusions we can draw about the Clouds' orbits around the MW. When combined with HI data from the Magellanic Stream our measurements should provide new constraints on both the mass distribution of the Galactic halo and models of the Stream.
Support for this work was provided by NASA through grant numbers associated with projects GO-09462 and GO-10130 from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

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