Query HELP
Return to query form.

Click on the proposal ID to see a list of data and publications.

1 programs found as a result of the query.

HST Cycle 16 proposal 11547: Characterizing Pre-Main Sequence Populations in Stellar Associations of the Large Magellanic Cloud
Dimitrios Gouliermis - Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie, Heidelberg

The Large Magellanic Cloud {LMC} offers an extremely rich sample of resolved low-mass stars {below 1 Solar Mass} in the act of formation that has not been explored sufficiently yet. These pre-main sequence {PMS} stars provide a unique snapshot of the star formation process, as it is being recorded for the last ~20 Myr, and they give important information on the low-mass Initial Mass Function {IMF} of their host stellar systems. Studies of young, rich LMC clusters like 30 Doradus are crowding limited, even at the angular resolution facilitated by HST in the optical. To learn more about low-mass PMS stars in the LMC, one has to study less crowded regions like young stellar assocations. We propose to employ WFPC2 to obtain deep photometry {V ~ 25.5 mag} of four selected LMC stellar associations in order to perform an original optical analysis of their red PMS and blue bright MS stellar populations. With these observations we aim at a comprehensive study, which will add substantial information on the most recent star formation and the IMF in the LMC. The data reduction and analysis will be performed with a 2D photometry software package especially developped by us for WFPC2 imaging of extended stellar associations with variable background. Our targets have been selected optimizing a combination of criteria, namely spatial resolution, crowding, low extinction, nebular contamination, and background confusion in comparison to other regions in the Local Group. Parallel NICMOS imaging will provide additional information on near-infrared properties of the stellar population in the regions surrounding these systems.