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Cited by 270

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 53 of the 53 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Is the SMC Bound to the LMC? The Hubble Space Telescope Proper Motion of the SMC

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Kallivayalil, Nitya, van der Marel, Roeland P., Alcock, Charles·2006·The Astrophysical Journal
DOI 10.1086/508014
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Abstract

We present a measurement of the systemic proper motion of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) made using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope ( HST ). We tracked the SMC's motion relative to four background QSOs over a baseline of approximately 2 yr. The measured proper motion is μ W = -1.16 ± 0.18 mas yr -1 , μ N = -1.17 ± 0.18 mas yr -1 . This is the best measurement yet of the SMC's proper motion. We combine this new result with our prior estimate of the proper motion of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) from the same observing program to investigate the orbital evolution of both Clouds over the past 9 Gyr. The current relative velocity between the Clouds is 105 ± 42 km s -1 . Our investigations of the past orbital motions of the Clouds in a simple model for the dark halo of the Milky Way imply that the Clouds could be unbound from each other. However, our data are also consistent with orbits in which the Clouds have been bound to each other for approximately a Hubble time. Smaller proper-motion errors and better understanding of the LMC and SMC masses would be required to constrain their past orbital history and their bound versus unbound nature unambiguously. The new proper-motion measurements should be sufficient to allow the construction of improved models for the origin and properties of the Magellanic Stream. In turn, this will provide new constraints on the properties of the Milky Way dark halo.

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Metadata

Authors
Kallivayalil, N., van der Marel, R. P., & Alcock, C.
Venue
The Astrophysical Journal
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Published
2006-12
Volume
652
Issue
2
Pages
1213-1229
ISSN
  • 0004-637X (ISSN-L)
  • 1538-4357
DOI
10.1086/508014
OpenAlex
W1894844506
Cited by
270
References
53
FWCI
15.62
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
bronze

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Is the SMC Bound to the LMC? The Hubble Space Telescope Proper Motion of the SMC. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1086/508014
The paper
Kallivayalil, N., van der Marel, R. P., & Alcock, C. (2006). Is the SMC Bound to the LMC? The Hubble Space Telescope Proper Motion of the SMC. The Astrophysical Journal. https://doi.org/10.1086/508014

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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