The Case of the Off-Center, Levitating Bar in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Abstract

I explore the hypothesis that many of the unusual aspects of the apparent stellar bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud are the result of viewing a triaxial stellar bulge that is embedded in a highly obscuring thin disk. Specifically, this hypothesis explains the observed off-center position of the bar within the disk, the differing apparent distances of the bar and disk, the near alignment of the bar's major axis position angle and the disk's line-of-nodes, and the asymmetric appearance of the bar itself. Indirectly, it may also play a role in explaining the microlensing rate toward the LMC and the recently observed large velocity dispersion of RR Lyrae stars.

arXiv comment5 emulateapj style pages, accepted for publication in ApJL

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• The Role of Dwarf Galaxy Interactions in Shaping the Magellanic System and Implications for Magellanic Irregulars
• Horizontal Branch Stars: The Interplay between Observations and Theory, and Insights into the Formation of the Galaxy
• The Magellanic Stream: Circumnavigating the Galaxy
• Spectroscopy of Red Giants in the LMC Bar: Abundances, Kinematics, and the Age-Metallicity Relation
• The population of X-ray supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Chemical abundances in LMC stellar populations. II. The bar sample
• SMASHing the LMC: A Tidally-induced Warp in the Outer LMC and a Large-scale Reddening Map
• The Stellar Ancestry of Supernovae in the Magellanic Clouds - I. the Most Recent Supernovae in the Large Magellanic Cloud
• Three dimensional maps of the Magellanic Clouds using RR Lyrae Stars and Cepheids II. The Small Magellanic Cloud
• On the Origin of Lopsidedness in Galaxies as Determined from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G)
• Three dimensional maps of the Magellanic Clouds using RR~Lyrae stars and Cepheids - I. The Large Magellanic Cloud
• The recent LMC-SMC collision: Timing and impact parameter constraints from comparison of Gaia LMC disk kinematics and N-body simulations
• The VMC Survey -- XXXIV. Morphology of Stellar Populations in the Magellanic Clouds
• SMASHing THE LMC: Mapping a Ring-like Stellar Overdensity in the LMC Disk
• Red variables in the OGLE-II data base -- III. Constraints on the three-dimensional structures of the LMC and SMC
• Tidal-induced lopsidedness in Magellanic-type galaxies
• Tidally Induced Offset Disks in Magellanic Spiral Galaxies
• Kinematic analysis of the Large Magellanic Cloud using Gaia DR3
• The Mysterious bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud: What is it?
• The origin of the LMC stellar bar: clues from the SFH of the bar and inner disk
• Vertical structure and kinematics of the LMC disc from SDSS/Gaia
• Precise Measurements of the LMC Bar's Geometry With Gaia DR3 and a Novel Solution to Crowding Induced Incompleteness in Star Counting
• M31 Pixel Lensing PLAN Campaign: MACHO Lensing and Self Lensing Signals
• Response of the LMC's Bar to a Recent SMC Collision and Implications for the SMC's Dark Matter Profile
• Asymmetries in the LMC velocity maps