We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
For a complete picture of the history of star formation in the Magellanic Clouds, knowledge about the age distribution as well as the surface distribution of the intermediate-age and the oldest stars is needed. The evolved red giants are the most luminous in these generations and have therefore attracted most interest and contributed much to our understanding of the stellar evolution. It is now possible to reach stars as faint as V = 24 mag, so that main-sequence field stars much older than 3–4 Gyr may be observed in the Clouds. Their importance for solving star formation problems will increase as observations of still fainter stars have become available (using the HST). A brief summary of what is known today is therefore appropriate.
Main-sequence stars
A large number of colour–magnitude diagrams reaching main-sequence stars below Mv = 2 mag have been presented for regions in many parts of the LMC. The bulk of stars appear to have formed about 3–4 Gyr ago (Butcher 1977, Stryker 1984, Hardy et al. 1984, Hodge 1987). Some doubts have been expressed about the reliability of the photographic photometry on which these results were based, as well as on the age calibrators used, but the overall results have been confirmed (Vallenari et al. 1994c). The main-sequence differential luminosity functions for seven LMC fields are compared in Fig. 7.1.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
