Thursday

The Magellanic Clouds, currently interacting with each other and the Milky Way, are in the early phases of a minor merger event. Due to their close proximity and position below the Galactic plane, the Clouds provide a unique opportunity to study in great detail the kinematics of resolved stellar populations within an interacting pair of galaxies. With the astrometric precision of state-of-the-art observing facilities it is now possible to measure the motions of stars within the Magellanic Cloud in the plane of the sky. We used data from the near-infrared VISTA survey of the Magellanic Cloud system (VMC) to construct maps of spatially resolved stellar proper motions across the main body of the SMC and the inner regions of the LMC. We modelled the centre-of-mass motion of the SMC and found a good agreement with recent space-based measurements. We analysed the internal kinematics of the intermediate-age/old and young stellar populations within the SMC separately. We found outward motions that point either towards a stretching of the galaxy or stripping of its outer regions. Several streams that we detected in the intermediate-age/old population provide kinematic evidence for predicted tidal features around the galaxy. We will further present preliminary results of our analysis of the inner regions of the LMC showing the motions of individual stellar populations within the LMC bar region and at the base of the spiral arms.