Accretion Onto the Milky Way: The Smith Cloud
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 2 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 108 solar masses.
- Publication:
-
From Interstellar Clouds to Star-Forming Galaxies: Universal Processes?
- Pub Date:
- 2016
- DOI:
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1511.05423
- Bibcode:
- 2016IAUS..315....9L
- Keywords:
-
- Galaxy: evolution;
- Galaxy: formation;
- Galaxy: halo;
- galaxies: ISM;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 4 Pages. To be published in the Proceedings of IAU Symposium 315