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Accretion Onto the Milky Way: The Smith Cloud

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2016

Felix J. Lockman*
Affiliation:
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, P.O. Box 2 Green Bank, WV 24944USA email: jlockman@nrao.edu
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Abstract

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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.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2016 

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