Widespread galactic winds emanate from the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), with the 30 Doradus starburst region generating the fastest and most concentrated gas flows. Poudel et al. report on the gas distribution, kinematics, and ionization conditions of the near-side outflow along eight sightlines using UV absorption-line observations from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultraviolet Legacy Library of Young Stars as Essential Standards (ULLYSES) program for this region along with 21cm HI (neutral hydrogen) observations from the Parkes Galactic All-Sky Survey (GASS) and Galactic Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (GASKAP) survey. The team finds that close to the center of 30 Doradus, the wind reaches maximum speeds of 100–150 km/s from the LMC’s disk. The metallicities and dust depletion patterns of high-velocity absorbers can be explained by either a foreground Milky Way (MW) halo cloud or an outflow from the LMC. The data further suggest that turbulent mixing layers exist in the wind. Finally, the team’s hydrodynamical simulations of the Magellanic Clouds and MW system suggest that the Magellanic Corona can protect the LMC winds from the ram pressure forces exerted by the MW’s halo.

The image above shows a schematic of the present-day, warped Magellanic Corona (in orange) in the y − z plane and the predicted position of the Magellanic Stream (in blue). The present-day LMC velocity is indicated with a gray arrow and the opposing direction of the apparent wind through the MW’s coronal gas (in purple) is marked with purple arrows. The blue arrows that emanate from the LMC’s disk represent the LMC’s galactic wind, which is encased within the Magellanic corona. The black line that extends between the Sun and a star embedded within the LMC’s disk illustrates the lines of sight that the team were able to probe in this absorption-line study.