Accretion Onto the Milky Way: The Smith Cloud
Astrophysics of Galaxies
2017-01-11 v1
Abstract
Active gas accretion onto the Milky Way is observed in an object called the Smith Cloud, which contains several million solar masses of neutral and warm ionized gas and is currently losing material to the Milky Way, adding angular momentum to the disk. It is several kpc in size and its tip lies two kpc below the Galactic plane. It appears to have no stellar counterpart, but could contain a stellar population like that of the dwarf galaxy Leo P. There are suggestions that its existence and survival require that it be embedded in a dark matter halo of a few 10^8 solar masses.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1511.05423,
title = {Accretion Onto the Milky Way: The Smith Cloud},
author = {Felix J. Lockman},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1511.05423},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
4 Pages. To be published in the Proceedings of IAU Symposium 315