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Warped and Hooked: Mapping the Magellanic Clouds in Three Dimensions Using Red Clump Stars
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DOI：10.3847/1538-4357/ae5c9e.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) are the Milky Way's nearest interacting galaxy pair, offering a unique laboratory for studying tidal effects on galactic disks. Despite extensive survey efforts, the 3D geometry of the Magellanic Clouds, particularly the putative warp of the LMC, remains poorly constrained due to incompleteness in their crowded centers and the low stellar density of their peripheries, which demand wide-field coverage. Using red clump (RC) stars as standard candles, corrected for age- and metallicity-dependent population effects with empirically calibrated color-magnitude relations and spatially resolved star formation histories, we construct the most detailed distance map of the Magellanic system to date. Based on similar to 2.3 million RC stars from Gaia Data Release 3 combined with modern reddening maps, we measure median heliocentric distances of 50.62 +/- 2.32 kpc for the LMC (to similar to 23 degrees) and 60.75 +/- 2.85 kpc for the SMC (to similar to 12 degrees). The maps reveal substructures including the LMC Northern Arm, southern hooks, the Magellanic Bridge, and SMC peripheral overdensities, with refreshed distance estimates. Fitting the LMC disk within 7 degrees yields a global inclination of i=25.degrees 32 +/- 0.degrees 10 and a line-of-nodes position angle of theta=142.degrees 34 +/- 0.degrees 21 . Most strikingly, we find the LMC periphery is warped azimuthally into a U-shaped structure reaching a vertical amplitude of similar to 7 kpc at a radius of similar to 15 kpc. In future work, we will perform detailed comparisons with live N-body simulations to assess possible formation scenarios for the LMC warp.
Keywords:
DISTANCES PUBLICATION BIAS
OPTICAL REDDENING MAPS
NEAR-INFRARED SURVEYS
VMC SURVEY
STELLAR POPULATIONS
FORMATION HISTORY
3-DIMENSIONAL STRUCTURE
GIANT BRANCH
EDGES SURVEY
LMC
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