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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Bringing the Visible Universe into Focus with Robo-AO
Published on: February 12, 2013
Kinematic evidence for an old stellar halo in the Large Magellanic Cloud
Dante Minniti1, Jura Borissova, Marina Rejkuba
1Department of Astronomy, Pontificia Universidad Católica, Aveñida Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile. dante@astro.puc.cl
Abstract:
The oldest and most metal-poor Milky Way stars form a kinematically hot halo, which motivates the two major formation scenarios for our galaxy: extended hierarchical accretion and rapid collapse. RR Lyrae stars are excellent tracers of old and metal-poor populations. We measured the kinematics of 43 RR Lyrae stars in the inner regions of the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy. The velocity dispersion equals 53 +/- 10 kilometers per second, which indicates that a kinematically hot metal-poor old halo also exists in the LMC. This result suggests that our galaxy and smaller late-type galaxies such as the LMC have similar early formation histories.
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