The Magellanic Stream - A Tail of Two Galaxies
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are shedding gaseous material into the halo of the Milky Way, creating an extended network of structures including the Magellanic Stream, Magellanic Bridge, and Leading Arm.
I will present results from our recent survey of the Magellanic System using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph onboard Hubble. These observations provide new constraints on the amount of ionized as well as neutral gas. We derive the sky covering fraction (~25% of the entire sky), total mass (~2e9 solar masses), and inflow rate onto the Milky Way (~4-7 solar masses per year) of Magellanic gas. The high inflow rate indicates that the Stream could elevate the Galactic star formation rate if it arrives in the disk, although indications of an evaporative encounter with the hot corona indicate the gas is changing phase as it accretes. The Stream will be placed in context with the nearby high-velocity clouds (HVCs) and used to show that tidally-stripped gas plays a vital role in the fueling of ~L* galaxies.
