Publication date: 15 Jan 2009

Authors: Meixner, M., MIRI Science Team, SAGE Team

Journal: Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society
Volume: 41
Issue: 1
Page: 256

Copyright: The American Astronomical Society

The recycling of matter between the interstellar medium (ISM) and stars are key evolutionary drivers of a galaxy's baryonic matter. The Spitzer and JWST/MIRI wavelengths provide a sensitive probe of circumstellar and interstellar dust and hence, allow us to study the physical processes of the ISM, the formation of new stars and the injection of mass by evolved stars and their relationships on the galaxy-wide scale. We have performed a uniform and unbiased imaging survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC, 7x7 degrees), using the IRAC (3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8 microns) and MIPS (24, 70, and 160 microns) instruments on board the Spitzer Space Telescope (Spitzer) in order to survey the agents of a galaxy's evolution (SAGE): the ISM, young stellar objects (YSOs) and dusty evolved stars (Meixner et al. 2006). Initial results from SAGE have revealed >1000 new YSOs (Whitney et al. 2008), a detailed map of the dust and ISM mass (Bernard et al. 2008) and estimates of the dusty mass-loss return (Srinivsan et al., submitted) of the 30,000 dusty evolved stars (Blum et al. 2006). Here we describe how the powerful capabilities of the JWST MIRI can be used to followup these new discoveries of SAGE-LMC and also how SAGE-like studies can be extended to nearby galaxies.

The SAGE Project is supported by NASA/Spitzer grant 1275598 and MIRI science team work is supported by NASA NAG5-12595.

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