Our most massive satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), has been the center of a heated debate in the astrophysics community over the last few years. That debate centers on whether this is the LMC’s first or second “pass” by the Milky Way itself—and it has huge implications for the evolution of our galaxy given the disruption such a large grouping of stars has. A new paper from Scott Lucchini, Jiwon Jesse Han, Sapna Mishra, and Andrew J. Fox and his co-authors, currently available on the arXiv preprint server, provides what they claim to be definitive evidence that this is, in fact, the first time LMC has encountered the Milky Way.
Is the Large Magellanic Cloud a first-time visitor?
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