Massive stars and their interstellar environment in the Magellanic Clouds

Abstract

The winds of massive stars play a major role in setting up and controlling both the phase structure of the interstellar medium in galaxies and the vertical distribution of gas in galactic disks. In turn, these processes provide feedback into control of the star formation rate. Thanks to their proximity, these processes can be studied in detail in the Magellanic Clouds. Here we describe the results of a deep emission-line image survey of the ring nebula population, and a global high-resolution H I and H II survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud. These data provide a new insight into the process of feedback between the disk and the halo gas in disk galaxies in general, and the LMC in particular.