We present the result of a near-infrared (JHK S ) survey along the Galactic plane, −10. • 5 ≤ l ≤ 10. • 5 and b = +1 • , with the IRSF 1.4m telescope and the SIRIUS camera. K S vs. H − K S color-magnitude diagrams reveal a well-defined population of red clump (RC) stars whose apparent magnitude peak changes continuously along the Galactic plane, from K S = 13.4 at l = −10 • to K S = 12.2 at l = 10 • after dereddening. This variation can be explained by the bar-like structure found in previous studies, but we find an additional inner structure at | l | 4 • , where the longitude -apparent magnitude relation is distinct from the outer bar, and the apparent magnitude peak changes by only ≈ 0.1 mag over the central 8 • . The exact nature of this inner structure is as yet uncertain.

We present a near-infrared ($JHK_{\rm s}$) photometric catalog, including 14811185 point sources for a 40 deg$^2$ area of the Large Magellanic Cloud, 2769682 sources for an 11 deg$^2$ area of the Small Magellanic Cloud, and 434145 sources for a 4 deg$^2$ area of the Magellanic Bridge. The 10$\sigma$ limiting magnitudes are 18.8, 17.8, and 16.6 mag at $J, H$, and $K_{\rm s}$, respectively. The photometric and astrometric accuracies for bright sources are 0.03–0.04 mag and 0$\rlap {.}{^{\prime\prime}}$1, respectively. Based on the catalog, we also present (1) spatial distributions, (2) luminosity functions, (3) color–color diagrams, and (4) color–magnitude diagrams for point sources toward the Magellanic Clouds.

We have found Herbig Ae/Be star candidates in the western region of the Magellanic Bridge. Using the near infrared camera SIRIUS and the 1.4 m telescope IRSF, we surveyed about 3.0 deg x 1.3 deg (24 deg < RA < 36 deg, -75 deg < Dec. < -73.7 deg) in the J, H, and Ks bands. On the basis of colors and magnitudes, about 200 Herbig Ae/Be star candidates are selected. Considering the contaminations by miscellaneous sources such as foreground stars and early-type dwarfs in the Magellanic Bridge, we estimate that about 80 (about 40%) of the candidates are likely to be Herbig Ae/Be stars. We also found one concentration of the candidates at the young star cluster NGC 796, strongly suggesting the existence of pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars in the Magellanic Bridge. This is the first detection of PMS star candidates in the Magellanic Bridge, and if they are genuine PMS stars, this could be direct evidence of recent star formation. However, the estimate of the number of Herbig Ae/Be stars depends on the fraction of classical Be stars, and thus a more precise determination of the Be star fraction or observations to differentiate between the Herbig Ae/Be stars and classical Be stars are required.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

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We report about the Suzaku observation of two ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs), X-1 and X-2, in NGC1313, together with their spectra by XMM-Newton. During the observation, both showed intensity-correlated spectral changes. The brighter source, X-1, exhibited the highest luminosity (∼ 3 × 10 40 erg s −1 ) ever recorded from this source. Its spectral variation is ascribed to a strong power-law like component with a mild high energy curvature, while about 10% of the flux is carried by a stable soft component modeled by a cool disk emission. These properties suggest that the source was in the "very high" state, wherein the disk emission is strongly Comptonized and the optically-thick disk is truncated at a large radii or cooled off. The spectrum of X-2 is best represented, in its fainter phase, by a multicolor disk model with the innermost disk temperature of 1.2-1.3 keV, and becomes flatter as the source gets brighter. Hence X-2 is interpreted to be in a slim disk state. These results suggest that the two ULXs host black holes of a few tens to a few hundreds solar masses.at University of Birmingham on June 9, 2015 http://ptps.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from