The Magellanic System: What have we learnt from FUSE?

TL;DR

This review summarizes key findings from FUSE observations of the Magellanic System, highlighting insights into galactic interactions, gas dynamics, and chemical composition that inform galaxy evolution models.

Contribution

It compiles and discusses FUSE's unique contributions to understanding the Magellanic System's gas properties and interactions, emphasizing new discoveries about molecular presence and metallicity.

Findings

Detection of coronal gas around LMC and SMC

Discovery of molecules in the Magellanic Stream and Bridge

Identification of high-velocity complexes between the Milky Way and the Clouds

Abstract

I review some of the findings on the Magellanic System produced by the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) during and after its eight years of service. The Magellanic System with its high-velocity complexes provides a nearby laboratory that can be used to characterize phenomena that involve interaction between galaxies, infall and outflow of gas and metals in galaxies. These processes are crucial for understanding the evolution of galaxies and the intergalactic medium. Among the FUSE successes I highlight are the coronal gas about the LMC and SMC, and beyond in the Stream, the outflows from these galaxies, the discovery of molecules in the diffuse gas of the Stream and the Bridge, an extremely sub-solar and sub-SMC metallicity of the Bridge, and a high-velocity complex between the Milky Way and the Clouds.