Atlas and Catalogue of Infrared Sources in the Magellanic Clouds

Around the beginning of the sixteenth century, Portuguese and Dutch sailors first ventured into southern seas. With their keen navigational interest in the skies, they noted the continuous presence of two cloud-like features, not far from the almost immediately Southern Pole. The first literature mention of these 'clouds' was in the journal written in 1520 by the Italian navigator Pigafetta on the first circumnavigation of the globe by Magalhaes (c/. Pigafetta et ai. , 1962). In honour of this exploit, the objects have since become known as the Magellanic Clouds, although the Dutch name 'Kaapsche Wolken' (Cape Clouds - after the Cape of Good Hope) has also been in use for centuries. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are dwarf irregular galaxies, orbiting our own Milky Way Galaxy, presently at distances of 53 and 63 kpc respectively (Humphreys, 1984) . . They are the galaxies nearest to us: most other Local Group galaxies are of order ten times more distant. The LMC and SMC are also the prototypical blue dwarf irregulars, representatives of a class of objects in which several hundred more distant objects are now known. Their masses are a few per cent of the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy, but they are relatively gas-rich and appear to be, at the present epoch, forming stars at a more prodiguous rate than our Galaxy (c/. Lequeux, 1984). The maps presented here are based on observations obtained in the Additional Observations program in the Deep Sky Mapping mode. The proximity of the Magellanic Clouds to the Southern Galactic Pole means that observations were obtained with almost orthogonal scan directions. The data sets derived for the in-scan and the cross-scan directions provided maps with maximum resolution in both directions. These maps are presented here independently. The main body of this publication is the Infrared Atlas of the Magellanic Clouds and the Catalogue of Infrared Sources. Preceding the Atlas and Catalogue is a set of tables correlating Catalogue sources with objects listed in other (optical) catalogues. A series of transparent overlays facilitates matching of Atlas sources with Catalogue maps. A 3.1/2 in. or 5.1/4 in. disk for IBM PC, XT, AT or compatibles which contains all data of IRAS catalogues in this book is available free of charge. If you are interested in receiving this disk please return the reply card enclosed in the book. Front Matter....Pages i-vii Introduction....Pages 1-6 Infrared Source Identification Tables....Pages 7-31 The Leiden-IRAS Magellanic Clouds Infrared Source Catalogues....Pages 33-101 Atlas of Infrared Emission of the Magellanic Clouds....Pages 103-213