Galactic Cannibalism: The Origin of the Magellanic Stream

The aim of this work is to model the formation of the Magellanic Stream via the resulting tidal gravitational field from the merger of the Milky Way with the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively). Two popular, yet competing, scenarios for the Stream’s formation are based upon tidal disruption (Lin and Lynden-Bell, 1977; Gardiner and Noguchi, 1996) or ram-pressure stripping (Moore and Davis, 1994). The recent discovery of the Leading Arm Feature (Putman et al., 1998) has strengthened the case for tidal disruption, in which both trailing and leading gas streams are a natural outcome.