APOD: Rotation of the Large Magellanic Cloud (2018 May 16)

[APOD Robot]

Rotation of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Explanation: This image is not blurry. It shows in clear detail that the largest satellite galaxy to our Milky Way, the Large Cloud of Magellan (LMC), rotates. First determined with Hubble, the rotation of the LMC is presented here with fine data from the Sun-orbiting Gaia satellite. Gaia measures the positions of stars so accurately that subsequent measurements can reveal slight proper motions of stars not previously detectable. The featured image shows, effectively, exaggerated star trails for millions of faint LMC stars. Inspection of the image also shows the center of the clockwise rotation: near the top of the LMC's central bar. The LMC, prominent in southern skies, is a small spiral galaxy that has been distorted by encounters with the greater Milky Way Galaxy and the lesser Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).

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[blastoff]

Why would it have that lobe above the center? Binary centers of gravity?

[Ann]

Gaia is such a great instrument!

But because it doesn't show bright stars the way "pixel bleeding" images do, it is sometimes a bit hard to make head or tail of Gaia's pictures. So the Tarantula Nebula is near the top of today's APOD, right? Near the center of rotation of the Large Magellanic Cloud?

Ann

[Chris Peterson]

Why would it have that lobe above the center? Binary centers of gravity?

No. It's what orbits look like when you have what is essentially a moving center of gravity caused by tidal interactions. Effectively, all of these stars see somewhat different centers of gravity, determined not just by the combined (and moving) mass of the LMC, but by the moving mass of the Milky Way, as well.

[Adriano]

Superb picture. Is there a black hole at the centre of LMC?

[edgardine]

So glad about gaia's data.

However, one of the sentences seems to be outdated information "The LMC [...] is a spiral galaxy that has been distorted by encounters with the greater Milky Way Galaxy and the lesser Small Magellanic Cloud."
Recently, I read some articles about the past encounters of Andromeda, in which they said that the LMC has been distorted then.
I may be wrong

[APODFORIST]

Which time span is displayed or extrapolated in this picture?

[BillT]

Superb picture. Is there a black hole at the centre of LMC?

Some evidence:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.10197

[Ann]

So glad about gaia's data.

However, one of the sentences seems to be outdated information "The LMC [...] is a spiral galaxy that has been distorted by encounters with the greater Milky Way Galaxy and the lesser Small Magellanic Cloud."
Recently, I read some articles about the past encounters of Andromeda, in which they said that the LMC has been distorted then.
I may be wrong

This Wikipedia article about the Hubble sequence identifies the Large Magellanic Cloud as an irregular galaxy. However, I think it could be argued that the LMC might also be classified as an SBd galaxy:

Sd (SBd) – very loosely wound, fragmentary arms; most of the luminosity is in the arms and not the bulge.

If you take a look at this picture of the Large Magellanic cloud, you might perhaps agree that the scattered regions of star formation surrounding the bar of the LMC do show some slight simiarities to spiral arms.

Ann

[JohnD]

Fingerprint!

[heehaw]

Why would it have that lobe above the center? Binary centers of gravity?

No. It's what orbits look like when you have what is essentially a moving center of gravity caused by tidal interactions. Effectively, all of these stars see somewhat different centers of gravity, determined not just by the combined (and moving) mass of the LMC, but by the moving mass of the Milky Way, as well.

Surely the motion is influenced by the distribution of "the ghost in the room," the dark matter? Can we find out about dark matter locations from Gaia?

[RocketRon]

Which time span is displayed or extrapolated in this picture?

Good question. Very good question...

[De58te]

Which time span is displayed or extrapolated in this picture?

I heard that Gaia's mission is to take up to 70 snapshots of its targets over 5 years [Wikipedia], and the elapsed time since Gaia's launch is 4 years, 4 months, and 27 days, I'd say the time period is around 4 years and 4 months. (Just my unofficial guess.)

[BillT]

ata

Which time span is displayed or extrapolated in this picture?

I heard that Gaia's mission is to take up to 70 snapshots of its targets over 5 years [Wikipedia], and the elapsed time since Gaia's launch is 4 years, 4 months, and 27 days, I'd say the time period is around 4 years and 4 months. (Just my unofficial guess.)

DR2 covers the first 22 months of data collection. DR1 was the first 14 months. It takes a lot of work before the data can be released in a usable form. The diagram is extrapolated from that. 22 months of proper motion would be sub pixel and invisible on a rendering like that.

[neufer]

Which time span is displayed or extrapolated in this picture?

I heard that Gaia's mission is to take up to 70 snapshots of its targets over 5 years [Wikipedia], and the elapsed time since Gaia's launch is 4 years, 4 months, and 27 days, I'd say the time period is around 4 years and 4 months. (Just my unofficial guess.)

DR2 covers the first 22 months of data collection. DR1 was the first 14 months. It takes a lot of work before the data can be released in a usable form. The diagram is extrapolated from that. 22 months of proper motion would be sub pixel and invisible on a rendering like that.

I wouldn't be too concerned with "sub pixel."

Multiple pixels are involved with each spinning Gaia "snapshot" and

the center of each "snapshot" Airy disk can be determined to high "sub pixel" precision.

[neufer]

Why would it have that lobe above the center? Binary centers of gravity?

No. It's what orbits look like when you have what is essentially a moving center of gravity caused by tidal interactions. Effectively, all of these stars see somewhat different centers of gravity, determined not just by the combined (and moving) mass of the LMC, but by the moving mass of the Milky Way, as well.

You lost me there, Chris. I would have said: Yes, binary centers of gravity.

How can you be so sure that it isn't primarily binary centers of gravity?

[edgardine]

So glad about gaia's data.

However, one of the sentences seems to be outdated information "The LMC [...] is a spiral galaxy that has been distorted by encounters with the greater Milky Way Galaxy and the lesser Small Magellanic Cloud."
Recently, I read some articles about the past encounters of Andromeda, in which they said that the LMC has been distorted then.
I may be wrong

This Wikipedia article about the Hubble sequence identifies the Large Magellanic Cloud as an irregular galaxy. However, I think it could be argued that the LMC might also be classified as an SBd galaxy:

Sd (SBd) – very loosely wound, fragmentary arms; most of the luminosity is in the arms and not the bulge.

If you take a look at this picture of the Large Magellanic cloud, you might perhaps agree that the scattered regions of star formation surrounding the bar of the LMC do show some slight simiarities to spiral arms.

Ann

Thank you for your answer, Ann. (I really appreciate your work on color, there are so many inconsistencies about it)

English is not my native language, I probably did not express myself clearly. What I consider potentially outdated is that the LMC has been distorted by the Milky Way rather than by Andromeda.
I read a recent article about it, but I can not retrieve it.
Here are two
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.10 ... 2/924/meta
https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.2748

[orin stepanek]

Elongated star trails make it look fuzzy wuzzy 1

[tmcdanel]

Why would it have that lobe above the center? Binary centers of gravity?

No. It's what orbits look like when you have what is essentially a moving center of gravity caused by tidal interactions. Effectively, all of these stars see somewhat different centers of gravity, determined not just by the combined (and moving) mass of the LMC, but by the moving mass of the Milky Way, as well.

You lost me there, Chris. I would have said: Yes, binary centers of gravity.

How can you be so sure that it isn't primarily binary centers of gravity?

I had the same question as the OP, Blastoff, which is why I came to the discussion. I do not understand what looks like "eddies" on the outer edges. A really good example of that is the upper left corner. I am not certain I understand Chris' response, except that it should be looked at "4 dimensionally" over time? with center's of gravity of binary and more complex systems moving?
Perhaps it would be easier to understand as an animated video.
Thank you all.

[Chris Peterson]

Which time span is displayed or extrapolated in this picture?

I don't think we can quite look at it like that. The convolution technique used on the data creates the appearance of flow in order to visualize the field, but a long exposure (that is, thousands of years) wouldn't look just like this image.

[Chris Peterson]

I heard that Gaia's mission is to take up to 70 snapshots of its targets over 5 years [Wikipedia], and the elapsed time since Gaia's launch is 4 years, 4 months, and 27 days, I'd say the time period is around 4 years and 4 months. (Just my unofficial guess.)

DR2 covers the first 22 months of data collection. DR1 was the first 14 months. It takes a lot of work before the data can be released in a usable form. The diagram is extrapolated from that. 22 months of proper motion would be sub pixel and invisible on a rendering like that.

I wouldn't be too concerned with "sub pixel."

Multiple pixels are involved with each spinning Gaia "snapshot" and

the center of each "snapshot" Airy disk can be determined to high "sub pixel" precision.

Yes. But that's not the point. At the scale of today's image, all the motion is subpixel, and since today's image contains no stellar images, there wouldn't even be centroids that could be calculated.

[Chris Peterson]

Why would it have that lobe above the center? Binary centers of gravity?

No. It's what orbits look like when you have what is essentially a moving center of gravity caused by tidal interactions. Effectively, all of these stars see somewhat different centers of gravity, determined not just by the combined (and moving) mass of the LMC, but by the moving mass of the Milky Way, as well.

You lost me there, Chris. I would have said: Yes, binary centers of gravity.

How can you be so sure that it isn't primarily binary centers of gravity?

I don't even know what a "binary center of gravity" is. A system only has one center of gravity. But in a system like this, there is a complex gravitational field, and there are long lasting tidal effects, as well. So the motion of the system is not uniformly around some clearly defined center of gravity.

[E Fish]

Fingerprint!

That was my first thought, too! Before I read the description, I was thinking it looked like a cosmic fingerprint.

[Steve Dutch]

Every so often something comes along that makes me shake my head in disbelief. Seeing proper motions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud is it for today.

[Chris Peterson]

Every so often something comes along that makes me shake my head in disbelief. Seeing proper motions of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud is it for today.

For me, it's not just seeing the information that this image presents, but appreciating the elegance of our visualization techniques given rich data sets. Because that's all we're looking at here: a huge table of numbers, converted to an image which instantly and without complex visual analysis gives us the underlying meaning of all those numbers in a very intuitive way.