The VMC survey -- XXXVIII. Proper motion of the Magellanic Bridge

Abstract

The Magellanic Clouds are a nearby pair of interacting dwarf galaxies and satellites of the Milky Way. Studying their kinematic properties is essential to understanding their origin and dynamical evolution. They have prominent tidal features and the kinematics of these features can give hints about the formation of tidal dwarfs, galaxy merging and the stripping of gas. In addition they are an example of dwarf galaxies that are in the process of merging with a massive galaxy. The goal of this study is to investigate the kinematics of the Magellanic Bridge, a tidal feature connecting the Magellanic Clouds, using stellar proper motions to understand their most recent interaction. We calculated proper motions based on multi-epoch $K_s$-band aperture photometry, which were obtained with the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), spanning a time of 1-3 yr, and we compared them with $Gaia$ Data Release 2 (DR2) proper motions. We tested two methods for removing Milky Way foreground stars using $Gaia$~DR2 parallaxes in combination with VISTA photometry or using distances based on Bayesian inference. We obtained proper motions for a total of 576,411 unique sources over an area of $23$ deg${}^2$ covering the Magellanic Bridge including mainly Milky Way foreground stars, background galaxies, and a small population of possible Magellanic Bridge stars ($<$15,000). The first proper motion measurement of the Magellanic Bridge centre is $1.80\pm 0.25$ mas yr${}^{-1}$ in right ascension and $-0.72\pm 0.13$ mas yr${}^{-1}$ in declination. The proper motion measurements confirm a flow motion from the Small to the Large Magellanic Cloud. This flow can now be measured all across the entire length of the Magellanic Bridge. Our measurements indicate that the Magellanic Bridge is stretching.

17 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (15)

• HI4PI: A full-sky HI survey based on EBHIS and GASS
• Are the Magellanic Clouds on their First Passage about the Milky Way?
• Is the SMC Bound to the LMC? The HST Proper Motion of the SMC
• The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA): Design, Technical Overview and Performance
• The VISTA Science Archive
• The VISTA ZYJHKs Photometric System: Calibration from 2MASS
• Clustering of Local Group distances: publication bias or correlated measurements? III. The Small Magellanic Cloud
• The VMC Survey. XXV. The 3D structure of the Small Magellanic Cloud from Classical Cepheids
• The total mass and dark halo properties of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• First Gaia Local Group Dynamics: Magellanic Clouds Proper Motion and Rotation
• Toward a Complete Understanding of the Magellanic Stream Formation
• The Magellanic Inter-Cloud Project (MAGIC) III: First spectroscopic evidence of a dwarf stripping a dwarf
• A Genetic Approach to the History of the Magellanic Clouds
• The iron abundance of the Magellanic Bridge
• Dust radiative transfer modelling of the infrared ring around the magnetar SGR 1900$+$14

Cited by in corpus (22)

• The synchronised dance of the Magellanic Clouds' star formation history
• The recent LMC-SMC collision: Timing and impact parameter constraints from comparison of Gaia LMC disk kinematics and N-body simulations
• The VMC Survey -- XLVIII. Classical Cepheids unveil the 3D geometry of the LMC
• The VMC survey -- XLI. Stellar proper motions within the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Magellanic Mayhem: Metallicities and Motions
• Kinematic analysis of the Large Magellanic Cloud using Gaia DR3
• Stellar substructures in the periphery of the Magellanic Clouds with the VISTA Hemisphere Survey from the red clump and other tracers
• Gaia view of a stellar sub-structure in front of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• The ASKAP-EMU Early Science Project: 888 MHz Radio Continuum Survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The VISCACHA survey -- VII. Assembly history of the Magellanic Bridge and SMC Wing from star clusters
• Application of a Neural Network classifier for the generation of clean Small Magellanic Cloud stellar samples
• Lessons from the Magellanic System and its modeling
• The VMC survey -- XLV. Proper motion of the outer LMC and the impact of the SMC
• Kinematic complexity around NGC419: resolving the proper motion of the cluster, the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Magellanic Bridge
• Kinematics of stellar substructures in the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Following the tidal trail: a history of modeling the Magellanic Stream
• The Evolution of Magellanic-like Galaxy Pairs and The Production of Magellanic Stream Analogues in Simulations with Tides, Ram Pressure, and Stellar Feedback
• MOA-2019-BLG-008Lb: a new microlensing detection of an object at the planet/brown dwarf boundary
• Discovery of NES, an extended tidal structure in the North-East of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• The VMC survey -- LIII. Data release #7. Complete survey data and data from additional programmes
• The VMC survey -- XLVI. Stellar proper motions in the centre of the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Discovery of O stars in the tidal Magellanic Bridge: Stellar parameters, abundances, and feedback of the nearest metal-poor massive stars and their implication for the Magellanic System ecology