The UM/CTIO Welcome to the home page of the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS)!
MCELS is a survey of two of our nearest neighboring galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC). We are doing the survey in the bright emission of Hydrogen (Halpha 6563), Sulfur ([S II] 6724), and Oxygen ([O III] 5007) from the interstellar gas of these two galaxies to study the properties, kinematics, and dynamics of the "violent" interstellar medium.
Although we are only recently finishing the reductions, you can already see some samples of the utility as well as the beauty of emission-line imaging which we will be bringing to the astronomical community and the public in general.
At the January 2006 meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), we are announcing the release of our three-color mosaic images (in JPEG format) of both the LMC and SMC.
See the details about our Preliminary Data Release (PDR) and how to get sample MCELS images of the LMC.
Our MCELS Image Gallery displays a selection of black-and-white, false color, and three-color images of various nebluae of the Magellanic Clouds we've recently imaged.
The MC SNRs page has catalogs of previously identified supernova remnants (SNRs), as well as news about recently identified SNRs and candidates. As we identify more remnants, we will add them to the catalogs.
The MCELS project has been supported in part by NSF grants AST-9540747 and AST-0307613, and through the generous support of the Dean B. McLaughlin Fund at the University of Michigan, a bequest from the family of Dr. Dean B. McLaughlin in memory of his lasting impact on Astronomy. The National Optical Astronomy Observatory is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. (AURA), under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation.
This Web page is maintained by Chris Smith and Roger Leiton at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. Please send comments, suggestions, or reports of any problems to csmith@ctio.noao.edu.
Last update: January 9, 2006 by RCS