The Magellanic Group and the Seven Dwarfs

Abstract

The Magellanic Clouds were the largest members of a group of dwarf galaxies that entered the Milky Way (MW) halo at late times. This group, dominated by the LMC, contained ~4% of the mass of the Milky Way prior to its accretion and tidal disruption, but ~70% of the known dwarfs orbiting the MW. Our theory addresses many outstanding problems in galaxy formation associated with dwarf galaxies. First, it can explain the planar orbital configuration populated by some dSphs in the MW. Second, it provides a mechanism for lighting up a subset of dwarf galaxies to reproduce the cumulative circular velocity distribution of the satellites in the MW. Finally, our model predicts that most dwarfs will be found in association with other dwarfs. The recent discovery of Leo V (Belokurov et al. 2008), a dwarf spheroidal companion of Leo IV, and the nearby dwarf associations supports our hypothesis.

Contributed talk to IAU Symposium 256: "The Magellanic System: Stars, Gas, and Galaxies"

References in corpus (17)

• Dark Matter Substructure in Galactic Halos
• The Kinematics of the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellites: Solving the Missing Satellite Problem
• Are the Magellanic Clouds on their First Passage about the Milky Way?
• The Progenitors of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies
• The Proper Motion of the Large Magellanic Cloud using HST
• The Anisotropic Distribution of Galactic Satellites
• Is the SMC Bound to the LMC? The HST Proper Motion of the SMC
• The Distribution of Satellite Galaxies: The Great Pancake
• A new view of the dwarf spheroidal satellites of the Milky Way from VLT/FLAMES: Where are the very metal poor stars?
• Small Dwarf Galaxies Within Larger Dwarfs: Why Some Are Luminous While Most Go Dark
• Leo V: A Companion of a Companion of the Milky Way Galaxy
• Associations of Dwarf Galaxies
• The orbital poles of Milky Way satellite galaxies: a rotationally supported disc-of-satellites
• Infall of substructures onto a Milky Way-like dark halo
• Proper Motions of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Imaging. III: Measurement for Ursa Minor
• The Young Globular Clusters of the Milky Way and the Local Group Galaxies: Playing With Great Circles
• Cold Dark Matter's Small Scale Crisis Grows Up

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Evidence for Two Early Accretion Events That Built the Milky Way Stellar Halo
• Making Counter-Orbiting Tidal Debris: The Origin of the Milky Way Disc of Satellites