A Hubble View of Star Forming Regions in the Magellanic Clouds

摘要

The Magellanic Clouds (MCs) offer an outstanding variety of young stellar associations, in which large samples of low-mass stars (with M approx< 1 M_☉ currently in the act of formation can be resolved and explored in detail only with the Hubble Space Telescope. These pre-main sequence (PMS) stars provide a unique snapshot of the star formation process, as it is being recorded for the last 20 Myr, and they give important information on the low-mass Initial Mass Function (IMF) of their host environments. We present the latest results from observations with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) of such star-forming regions in the MCs, and discuss the importance of Hubble for a comprehensive understanding of the most recent low-mass star formation and the low-mass IMF in the MCs.