Star Formation Activity and ISM Properties in the Magellanic Clouds

Abstract

The formation of stellar clusters is one of the biggest issues in Astronomy. In our Galaxy, the currently formed clusters are only open clusters; no “young” globular clusters have been observed. On the other hand, in the LMC, stellar clusters called “populous clusters” are found to be forming at present. Comparative studies of young stars as well as the properties of giant molecular clouds both in our Galaxy and LMC are therefore of vital importance. We present here the statistical comparison of the distribution of YSOs with that of CO molecular clouds detected by the NANTEN CO survey throughout the entire galaxy. The Spizter/SAGE dataset provides the most comprehensive and complete knowledge on how and where the YSOs are distributed in the LMCs for the first time. The distribution of SAGE sources with a cold spectrum shows good correlation with that of molecular clouds, indicating that these sources are good candidates for YSOs.