The Magellanic Clouds,
our companion galaxies

The Magellanic Clouds are the two brightest satellites of our Galaxy, easily visible to the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. These two irregular galaxies contain a much smaller proportion of heavy elements than our Galaxy, making them an invaluable nearby laboratory for studying both star and cluster formation and evolution under conditions no longer present in the Milky Way. Interacting with each other and with our Milky Way, our companion galaxies are expected to eventually merge with our Galaxy. A recent redetermination of their orbits, however, suggests that they might only have entered our Galaxy’s surroundings recently and might just be passing through. Repeated close encounters between the two Clouds are not only triggering star formation, but have also led to the formation of a bridge of stars and gas between them. Moreover, a gigantic trail of gas, the Magellanic Stream, is emerging from the Clouds and has been traced across a large portion of the sky.

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About Eva Grebel

Eva Grebel received her PhD in astronomy from Bonn University in 1995 and carried out research in the United States and Germany before becoming professor of astronomy at the University of Basel, Switzerland, in 2003. She is currently professor of astronomy at the Center for Astronomy at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her main research interests are the formation and evolution of galaxies, with particular emphasis on the Local Group and the Magellanic Clouds. She is involved in several large international collaborations, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Radial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) and the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), to explore the evolutionary history of the Milky Way and its surroundings, which in turn provides valuable tests of cosmological models.

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