January 2013
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11 Reads
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are two of the nearest galaxies to our own Milky Way, and have played important roles as astrophysical laboratories for understanding the stellar populations of galaxies. While they are known to be an interacting pair, they have always been viewed as distinct galaxies. In 2011, Olsen et al. made the surprising discovery that about 5% of the stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud appear to have their origin in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The result may explain the large amount of star formation activity in 30 Doradus, as that star-forming region is located where the accreted stream of SMC gas and stars appear to impact the LMC disk. We have reduced and measured velocities from ~2000 spectra that we collected in January 2012, with the goal of clearly establishing the origin of the accreted population of stars. We are now working on completing the spectral data analysis, modeling the full set of velocities that we now have, and measuring chemical abundances for a subset of the stars that we have discovered. Brianna Smart was supported by the NOAO/KPNO Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Program which is funded by the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program and the Department of Defense ASSURE program through Scientific Program Order No. 13 (AST-0754223) of the Cooperative Agreement No. AST-0132798 between the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)and the NSF.