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Session 35 - Old Stellar Populations Beyond the Milky Way - I.
Oral session, Wednesday, June 11
North Main Hall A,
The Magellanic Clouds are the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way where stars are actively being formed. Buried beneath the vigorous activity of star formation are faint traces of an ancient population. Roughly a dozen globular clusters in the LMC and one cluster in the SMC are the obvious tracers of this population, but a field star population, represented by metal-poor giants, RR Lyraes, and some of the Mira variables is also present. I will review the properties of the old stellar population in the Clouds from ground-based surveys, and present new results from HST imaging data on the ages and chemical abundances of the Cloud globular clusters.