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P. F. Winkler, A.L. Young, D. Braziunas, R. Condon, E.C. Galle (Middlebury Coll.), B.E. Reaser (Swarthmore Coll.), R. Leiton, R.C. Smith (NOAO/CTIO), MCELS Team
A new color mosaic image of the Small Magellanic Cloud shows the emission from interstellar gas in unprecedented detail. The Magellanic Cloud Emission-Line Survey (MCELS) covered the central 3.5 x 4.5 degrees of the SMC in H\alpha, [S~II], and [O~III] emission lines, plus red and green continuum bands, over six years from the Curtis Schmidt Telescope at CTIO. We have combined over a thousand individual images into a mosaic with a scale of 2 arcsec/pixel and a resolution of 5 arcsec or better. Subtracting away continuum images enables us to effectively remove most of the stars to reveal faint extended structures in the interstellar medium. We are using these multi-color mosaics to identify and classify structures on scales from < 1 pc to that of the entire galaxy, including H II regions, planetary nebulae, supernova remnants, superbubbles, and supergiant shells, some examples of which are discussed in an accompanying paper by Reaser, et al.
This work has been supported in part by NSF grants AST-0307613 and AST-9540747.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.