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According to a new study by astronomers from the University of Michigan, two satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, the Little Magellanic Cloud and the Great Magellanic Cloud, collided a few million years ago.
With the help of new images collected by a powerful orbiting telescope, astronomers from the University of Michigan have noticed the southeastern region, or "wing," of the little magellanic cloud coming off its galaxy dwarf.
Sally Oey, a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan, and Johnny Dorigo Jones, an undergraduate researcher, collaborated with an international team of researchers to examine pieces of stars called "runaways" that had been ejected within the SMC. These data come from Gaia, an orbiting telescope launched by the European Space Agency.
"It's really interesting that Gaia got the proper motions of these stars.These movements contain everything we watch," said Jones in a UM press release. "For example, if we observe someone walking in the cabin of a plane in flight, the movement we see contains that of the plane, as well as the much slower movement of the person walking. "
Gaia can trace the movement of stars in real time by imagining it repeatedly for several years. This allows astronomers to measure the path of stars in the sky.
This provided the first conclusive evidence of the recent collision between Magellan's small and large clouds.
The analysis of the galaxy in this way helps astronomers to give a complete sample of stars in a single parent galaxy and helps them measure the speed of these stars.
"It's really one of our exciting results," Oey said in his release. "You can actually see that the wing is its own separate region that stretches away from the rest of the SMC."
This article has been adapted from its original source.
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