Astronomers discover a potential new satellite of the Large Magellanic Cloud
http://phys.org/news/2016-10-astronomers-potential-satellite-large-magellanic.html
An international team of astronomers, led by Nicolas Martin of the Observatory of Strasbourg in France, has detected a new,
very faint stellar system, designated SMASH 1. This compac, very faint system could be a satellite of the Large Magellanic
Cloud (LMC). The findings are reported in a paper published Sept. 19 on arXiv.org.
In the continuous search for satellite systems of the Magellanic Clouds, the Survey of the Magellanic Stellar History (SMASH)
has proved to be invaluable when it comes to finding very faint LMC-bound stellar systems. The survey investigates the complex
stellar structures of the Magellanic system—the clouds themselves, the Magellanic Bridge and the leading part of the Magellanic
Stream. The project employs the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the 4 m Víctor M. Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo
Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.
Martin's team found the new stellar system in the outskirts of the LMC while conducting a single field observation in January
2014 under the SMASH program. The system was discovered through a visual inspection of the stellar distribution of stars that
could correspond to red giant branch or main sequence stars.
