We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the solar system, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a large, wide-field ground-based system designed to obtain repeated images covering the sky visible from Cerro Pachón in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg 2 field of view, a 3.2-gigapixel camera, and six filters (ugrizy) covering the wavelength range 320-1050 nm. The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. About 90% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode that will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg 2 region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 yr of operations and will yield a co-added map to r∼27.5. These data will result in databases including about 32 trillion observations of 20 billion galaxies and a similar number of stars, and they will serve the majority of the primary science programs. The remaining 10% of the observing time will be allocated to special projects such as Very Deep and Very Fast time domain surveys, whose details are currently under discussion. We illustrate how the LSST science drivers led to these choices of system parameters, and we describe the expected data products and their characteristics.

We present proper motions for the Large & Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC & SMC) based on three epochs of Hubble Space Telescope data, spanning a ∼ 7 yr baseline, and centered on fields with background QSOs. The first two epochs, the subject of past analyses, were obtained with ACS/HRC, and have been reanalyzed here. The new third epoch with WFC3/UVIS increases the time baseline and provides better control of systematics. The three-epoch data yield proper motion random errors of only 1-2% per field. For the LMC this is sufficient to constrain the internal proper motion dynamics, as will be discussed in a separate paper. Here we focus on the implied center-ofmass proper motions: µ W,LMC = −1.910 ± 0.020 mas yr −1 , µ N,LMC = 0.229 ± 0.047 mas yr −1 , and µ W,SMC = −0.772 ± 0.063 mas yr −1 , µ N,SMC = −1.117 ± 0.061 mas yr −1 . We combine the results with a revised understanding of the solar motion in the Milky Way to derive Galactocentric velocities: v tot,LMC = 321 ± 24 km s −1 and v tot,SMC = 217 ± 26 km s −1 . Our proper motion uncertainties are now dominated by limitations in our understanding of the internal kinematics and geometry of the Clouds, and our velocity uncertainties are dominated by distance errors. Orbit calculations for the Clouds around the Milky Way allow a range of orbital periods, depending on the uncertain masses of the Milky Way and LMC. Periods 4 Gyr are ruled out, which poses a challenge for traditional Magellanic Stream models. First-infall orbits are preferred (as supported by other arguments as well) if one imposes the requirement that the LMC and SMC must have been a bound pair for at least several Gyr.

Recent proper motion measurements of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) by Kallivayalil et al. (2006a,b) suggest that the 3D velocities of the Clouds are substantially higher (∼100 km/s) than previously estimated and now approach the escape velocity of the Milky Way (MW). Previous studies have also assumed that the Milky Way can be adequately modeled as an isothermal sphere to large distances. Here we re-examine the orbital history of the Clouds using the new velocities and a ΛCDM-motivated MW model with virial mass M vir = 10 12 M ⊙ (e.g. Klypin et al. (2002)). We conclude that the L/SMC are either currently on their first passage about the MW or, if the MW can be accurately modeled by an isothermal sphere to distances 200 kpc (i.e., M vir > 2 × 10 12 M ⊙ ), that their orbital period and apogalacticon distance must be a factor of two larger than previously estimated, increasing to 3 Gyr and 200 kpc, respectively. A first passage scenario is consistent with the fact that the LMC and SMC appear to be outliers when compared to other satellite galaxies of the MW: they are irregular in appearance and are moving faster. We discuss the implications of this orbital analysis for our understanding of the star formation history, the nature of the warp in the MW disk and the origin of the Magellanic Stream (MS), a band of HI gas trailing the LMC and SMC that extends ∼100 degrees across the sky. Specifically, as a consequence of the new orbital history of the Clouds, the origin of the MS may not be explainable by current tidal and ram pressure stripping models.

We present a novel pair of numerical models of the interaction history between the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) and our Milky Way (MW) in light of recent high‐precision proper motions from the Hubble Space Telescope. Given the updated velocities, cosmological simulations of hierarchical structure formation favour a scenario where the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) are currently on their first infall towards our Galaxy. We illustrate here that the observed irregular morphology and internal kinematics of the Magellanic System (in gas and stars) are naturally explained by interactions between the LMC and SMC, rather than gravitational interactions with the MW. These conclusions provide further support that the MCs are completing their first infall to our system. In particular, we demonstrate that the Magellanic Stream, a band of H i gas trailing behind the Clouds 150° across the sky, can be accounted for by the action of LMC tides on the SMC before the system was accreted by the MW. We further demonstrate that the off‐centre, warped stellar bar of the LMC, and its one‐armed spiral can be naturally explained by a recent direct collision with its lower mass companion, the SMC. Such structures are key morphological characteristics of a class of galaxies referred to as Magellanic Irregulars, the majority of which are not associated with massive spiral galaxies. We infer that dwarf–dwarf galaxy interactions are important drivers for the morphological evolution of Magellanic Irregulars and can dramatically affect the efficiency of baryon removal from dwarf galaxies via the formation of extended tidal bridges and tails. Such interactions are not only important for the evolution of dwarf galaxies but also have direct consequences for the build‐up of baryons in our own MW, as LMC‐mass systems are believed to be the dominant building blocks of MW‐type haloes.

A proper understanding of the Milky Way (MW) dwarf galaxies in a cosmological context requires knowledge of their 3D velocities and orbits. However, proper motion (PM) measurements have generally been of limited accuracy and are available only for more massive dwarfs. We therefore present a new study of the kinematics of the MW dwarf galaxies. We use the Gaia DR2 for those dwarfs that have been spectroscopically observed in the literature. We derive systemic PMs for 39 galaxies and galaxy candidates out to 420 kpc, and generally find good consistency for the subset with measurements available from other studies. We derive the implied Galactocentric velocities, and calculate orbits in canonical MW halo potentials of low (0.8 × 10 12 M ) and high mass (1.6 × 10 12 M ). Comparison of the distributions of orbital apocenters and 3D velocities to the halo virial radius and escape velocity, respectively, suggests that the satellite kinematics are best explained in the high-mass halo. Tuc III, Crater II, and additional candidates have orbital pericenters small enough to imply significant tidal influences. Relevant to the missing satellite problem, the fact that fewer galaxies are observed to be near apocenter than near pericenter implies that there must be a population of distant dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered. Of the 39 dwarfs: 12 have orbital poles that do not align with the MW plane of satellites (given reasonable assumptions about its intrinsic thickness); 10 have insufficient PM accuracy to establish whether they align; and 17 satellites align, of which 11 are co-orbiting and (somewhat surprisingly, in view of prior knowledge) 6 are counter-orbiting. Group infall might have contributed to this, but no definitive association is found for the members of the Crater-Leo group.

In a companion paper by Koposov et al., RR Lyrae from Gaia Data Release 2 are used to demonstrate that stars in the Orphan stream have velocity vectors significantly misaligned with the stream track, suggesting that it has received a large gravitational perturbation from a satellite of the Milky Way. We argue that such a mismatch cannot arise due to any realistic static Milky Way potential and then explore the perturbative effects of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We find that the LMC can produce precisely the observed motiontrack mismatch and we therefore use the Orphan stream to measure the mass of the Cloud. We simultaneously fit the Milky Way and LMC potentials and infer that a total LMC mass of 1.38 +0.27 −0.24 × 10 11 M is required to bend the Orphan Stream, showing for the first time that the LMC has a large and measurable effect on structures orbiting the Milky Way. This has far-reaching consequences for any technique which assumes that tracers are orbiting a static Milky Way. Furthermore, we measure the Milky Way mass within 50 kpc to be 3.80 +0.14 −0.11 × 10 11 M . Finally, we use these results to predict that, due to the reflex motion of the Milky Way in response to the LMC, the outskirts of the Milky Way's stellar halo should exhibit a bulk, upwards motion.

We present the Stage II results from the ongoing Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) Survey. Upon completion, the SAGA Survey will spectroscopically identify satellite galaxies brighter than M r,o  = −12.3 around 100 Milky Way (MW) analogs at z ∼ 0.01. In Stage II, we have more than quadrupled the sample size of Stage I, delivering results from 127 satellites around 36 MW analogs with an improved target selection strategy and deep photometric imaging catalogs from the Dark Energy Survey and the Legacy Surveys. We have obtained 25,372 galaxy redshifts, peaking around z = 0.2. These data significantly increase spectroscopic coverage for very low redshift objects in 17 < r o  < 20.75 around SAGA hosts, creating a unique data set that places the Local Group in a wider context. The number of confirmed satellites per system ranges from zero to nine and correlates with host galaxy and brightest satellite luminosities. We find that the number and luminosities of MW satellites are consistent with being drawn from the same underlying distribution as SAGA systems. The majority of confirmed SAGA satellites are star-forming, and the quenched fraction increases as satellite stellar mass and projected radius from the host galaxy decrease. Overall, the satellite quenched fraction among SAGA systems is lower than that in the Local Group. We compare the luminosity functions and radial distributions of SAGA satellites with theoretical predictions based on cold dark matter simulations and an empirical galaxy–halo connection model and find that the results are broadly in agreement.

We present a measurement of the systemic proper motion of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) from astrometry with the High Resolution Camera (HRC) of the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST ). We observed LMC fields centered on 21 background QSOs that were discovered from their optical variability in the MACHO database. The QSOs are distributed homogeneously behind the central few degrees of the LMC. With 2 epochs of HRC data and a ∼ 2 year baseline we determine the proper motion of the LMC to better than 5% accuracy: µ W = −2.03 ± 0.08 mas yr −1 , µ N = 0.44 ± 0.05 mas yr −1 . This is the most accurate proper motion measurement for any Milky Way satellite thus far. When combined with HI data from the Magellanic Stream this should provide new constraints on both the mass distribution of the Galactic Halo and models of the Stream.