Collaborative Research: The Interacting Magellanic Clouds - Excavating the Fossil Evidence

The question of how galaxies form and change is an extremely complex one. The resolved stars and gas of the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy allow us to infer many important aspects of galaxy evolution for larger galaxies. For the more numerous and smaller dwarf galaxies, however, the picture of how they formed and evolved is much less clear. Two exceptions, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (MCs), serve as unique laboratories for observing galaxy evolution processes that occur in low mass galaxies. The investigators will use new observations and existing datasets to map the Magellanic Clouds in a search for the fossil evidence of past interactions of the MCs with one another or with smaller systems they have accreted. The team will will create astronomy lesson plans and resources with the Apsáalooke (Crow) tribe that explore Native and Western science, and they will help deliver the lessons at many outreach events. The team will contribute to a summer STEM research programs at UVa for students at college-level, identified as a primary attrition point in the STEM career path for the URM community. The team will support professional development of early career scientists, including two graduate students and six undergraduates. The investigators will use cutting-edge observational datasets to map the Magellanic Clouds and their periphery and search for the fossil evidence of past interactions of the MCs with one another or with smaller systems they have accreted. By mapping the kinematical and chemical abundance patterns across the Clouds they will look for spatial variations that are benchmarks in their elemental abundance and motions dynamics and/or provide key signatures to the origin of known and potentially new substructures among the stars and gas in the extended periphery of the MCs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.