Related papers: The star formation process in the Magellanic Cloud…
Massive stars are key players in the evolution of galaxies, yet their formation pathway remains unclear. In this work, we use data from several galaxy-wide surveys to build an unbiased dataset of ~700 massive young stellar objects (MYSOs),…
The rich star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are ideal for studying the process of star formation. Here we focus on the determination of age spreads amongst the massive stars in two young clusters, NGC1818 and NGC1805. We…
We have used high-resolution spectra obtained with the multifiber facility FLAMES at the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory to derive kinematic properties and chemical abundances of Fe, O, Mg and Si for 89 stars in…
We first show that a large amount of metal-poor gas is stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and fallen into the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) during the tidal interaction between the SMC, the LMC, and the Galaxy over the last 2…
Oxygen isotope abundances and their ratios are fingerprints of stellar evolution and therefore provide a powerful tool in tracing the enrichment history of galaxies. However, their behavior in low-metallicity dwarf galaxies remains largely…
All stars are born in molecular clouds, and most in giant molecular clouds (GMCs), which thus set the star formation activity of galaxies. We first review their observed properties, including measures of mass surface density, Sigma, and…
We present a detailed reconstruction of the star-formation history of the Constellation III region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, to constrain the formation mechanism of this enigmatic feature. Star formation in Constellation III seems to…
We present the chemical composition of 206 red giant branch stars members of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using optical, high-resolution spectra collected with the multi-object spectrograph FLAMES-GIRAFFE at the ESO Very Large…
Recent observations of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) have revealed that the HI gas shows a significant amount of rotation (V_c 60 km/s), while no or little rotation is evident for the old stellar populations. We suggest that this unique…
We present the first results of a project aimed at following the formation and long-term dynamical evolution of star clusters within the potential of a host galaxy. Here we focus on a model evolved within a simplified potential representing…
Regions of different metallicity have been identified in the Magellanic Clouds by using the ratio between Asymptotic Giant Branch stars of spectral type C and M. In the Large Magellanic Cloud the ratio appears to decrease radially while in…
The galactic tidal interaction is a possible mechanism to trigger the active star formation in galaxies. Recent analyses using the Hi data in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) proposed that the tidally driven colliding HI flows, induced by…
Star formation does not occur until the onset of gravitational collapse inside giant molecular clouds. However, the conditions that initiate cloud collapse and regulate the star formation process remain poorly understood. Local processes…
We report results on the internal dynamical evolution of old star clusters located in the outer regions of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Because the SMC has been imprinted with evidence of tidal interaction with the Large Magellanic…
Recent high precision proper motions from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) suggest that the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) are either on their first passage or on an eccentric long period (>6 Gyr) orbit about…
The Magellanic Stream is unique to sample the MW potential from ~50 kpc to 300 kpc, and is also unique in constraining the LMC mass, an increasingly important question for the Local Group/Milky Way modeling. Here we compare strengths and…
The abundance gradients and the radial gas profile of the Galactic disc are analysed by means of a model for the chemical evolution of galaxies. As one of the major uncertainties in models for galaxy evolution is the star formation (SF)…
Important problems to which we would like to find answers are: What are the distances to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC)? What is the present distribution of stars, gas and dark matter in the Clouds,…
We report on the astrophysical properties of a sample of star clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). They have been selected with the aim of looking for the connection between their ages, heliocentric distances and metallicities with…
The inner few hundred parsecs of the Milky Way harbours gas densities, pressures, velocity dispersions, an interstellar radiation field and a cosmic ray ionisation rate orders of magnitude higher than the disc; akin to the environment found…