Three aspects of red giant studies in the Magellanic Clouds
arXiv:astro-ph/0207619 · doi:10.1007/978-94-010-0139-7_2
Abstract
There are three important aspects concerning the study of the red giant and in particular of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the Magellanic Clouds. These are: the surface distribution, the luminosity function and the variability. The spatial distribution of AGB stars is an efficient tool to study the structure of the galaxies and their metalicity by analysing the ratio between carbon- and oxygen-rich AGB stars. The shape of the luminosity function carries informations about the star formation rate in the Clouds and it can be mathematically related to their history. Most AGB stars vary their magnitude in a few to several hundred years time; the one epoch DENIS magnitudes for both Large and Small Magellanic Cloud AGB stars outline the same relations as a function of period.
8 pages, 6 figures, invited talk, to be published in: Mass-Losing Pulsating Stars and their Circumstellar Matter, Y. Nakada & M. Honma (eds) Kluwer ASSL series
References in corpus (4)
- The Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey: The Small Magellanic Cloud Stellar Catalog and Extinction Map
- Magellanic Cloud Structure from Near-IR Surveys I: The Viewing Angles of the LMC
- A UBVR CCD Survey of the Magellanic Clouds
- Variability and spectral classification of LMC giants: results from DENIS and EROS