Australian National University | 2018 Nov 08
Astronomers have witnessed, in the finest detail yet, a brutal David-vs-Goliath fight between two nearby galaxies that are tearing chunks from each other and flinging them into the gaseous Magellanic Stream, a cosmic river of blood encircling our Milky Way.
The new study led by The Australian National University (ANU) investigated the violent stoush between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds – dwarf galaxies on the Milky Way’s periphery that are visible at night with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere.
Lead researcher Dr Dougal Mackey from ANU said the team created an ultra-faint map of stars in the outer edges of the Clouds using the Dark Energy Camera on the 4m Blanco telescope in Chile and revealed the Clouds have had repeated interactions with each other over billions of years. ...
Dr Mackey said the results provided further evidence that the nasty and continuous conflicts between the two Clouds had created the Magellanic Stream. ...
Dr Mackey said the team also discovered a previously unknown tiny galaxy, called Hydrus I, sitting in between the two Clouds. ...
Substructures and Tidal Distortions in the Magellanic Stellar Periphery ~ Dougal Mackey et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 858(2):L21 (10 May 2018) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aac175
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1804.06431 > 17 Apr 2018
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