Quote:
Originally Posted by gregbradley
A fabulous image Mat and unique by showing this Z spiral. You can see the LMC used to be a spiral galaxy once. I wonder if it has already passed through the Milky Way once or is it being drawn in just now for the first time and being distorted?
Greg.
|
Thanks Greg. I'm not sure about the theory for the loss of the LMC spiral but I did come across a few papers which suggest the the LMC is on its first passage around the Milky Way, and that it just crossed the MW boundary ~700 million years ago. I'm not sure if that resulted in the current LMC structure but the gravitational forces must have been massive.