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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 August 2015
The rotation curves of the LMC and the Galaxy differ markedly by the slope of the curve near the centre. Two causes may be responsible for this difference. Firstly, the mass of the Galaxy exceeds that of LMC by about one order of magnitude and the resulting orbital velocities at corresponding distances must be larger in the Galaxy than in the LMC. Secondly, the distribution of mass may be different in the two systems. Indeed, several investigations showed that the Galaxy is best represented by a model exhibiting a strong concentration of mass while the LMC is consistent with models of a very weak concentration, a homogeneous spheroid yielding a passable approximation.