May 4, 2021
The gravity of the Large Magellanic Cloud – one of the Milky Way’s satellite dwarf galaxies – is collecting stars behind it in a trail, like the wake from a boat, as it is traveling through our galaxy’s halo.
Astronomers observed distant stars in the faint halo surrounding our Milky Way galaxy and have now created a map of the halo, the first of its kind of these outermost parts of our galaxy. These new observations, the astronomers said in April 2021, show how the Large Magellanic Cloud – the Milky Way’s satellite galaxy – has created a wake, like a ship sailing through calm waters, as it is traveling through the halo of the Milky Way. The wake shows up as a distinct bright pathway of stars on the map, telling us that the Magellanic clouds are still traveling in their very first orbit around the Milky Way galaxy. And the wake itself may be made up of dark matter, dragging the stars along with it!