Abstract

Invited Talk - Splinter 4MOST   (MW-0337)

The 1001MC survey - First-look data and future directions

Lara Cullinane, Maria-Rosa Cioni, Jesper Storm
Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam

As the most massive satellites of the Milky Way, and the closest pair of interacting dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC/SMC) are an excellent laboratory for the study of stellar populations and the effects of interactions on galaxy evolution. There is a plethora of evidence for complex tidal interactions between the Clouds, as well as with the Milky Way; however, many questions still remain regarding the interaction history of the Magellanic system, particularly beyond the effects of the most recent LMC/SMC close passage. The 1001 Magellanic Fields survey (1001MC), a consortium survey on the new 4m Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST), is designed to address these questions and provide an exquisitely detailed picture of the evolutionary history of these galaxies. Over five years, the survey will collect spectra for over a million stars, spanning a wide variety of different types and ages -- including young massive stars, intermediate-age giant stars, old red giant and horizontal branch stars, and different types of pulsating variable stars -- in both low (R~6500) and high (R~20000) resolution, across the full spatial extent of the Magellanic system. In combination with e.g. Gaia astrometry, this will enable the derivation of 3D kinematics, as well as numerous elemental abundances, allowing kinematical and chemical patterns to be linked to different structures in order to establish the dynamical and chemical evolution of the system. Observations of the central LMC have already been performed during the science validation phases of the 4MOST instrument. In this talk, I will present a first look at these pre-release data. I will give a brief overview of the data reduction and resulting spectral quality, benchmarking against existing observations of these regions, and discuss example science cases. I will also describe the ongoing survey progress and direction, and discuss synergies with other ongoing and forthcoming surveys of the Clouds.