We are performing a uniform and unbiased imaging survey of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC; $7 ; 7) using the IRAC (3.6, 4.5, 5.8, and 8 m) and MIPS (24, 70, and 160 m) instruments on board the Spitzer Space Telescope in the Surveying the Agents of a Galaxy's Evolution (SAGE) survey, these agents being the interstellar medium (ISM) and stars in the LMC. This paper provides an overview of the SAGE Legacy project, including observing strategy, data processing, and initial results. Three key science goals determined the coverage and depth of the survey. The detection of diffuse ISM with column densities >1:2 ; 10 21 H cm À2 permits detailed studies of dust processes in the ISM. SAGE's point-source sensitivity enables a complete census of newly formed stars with masses >3 M that will determine the current star formation rate in the LMC. SAGE's detection of evolved stars with mass-loss rates >1 ; 10 À8 M yr À1 will quantify the rate at which evolved stars inject mass into the ISM of the LMC. The observing strategy includes two epochs in 2005, separated by 3 months, that both mitigate instrumental artifacts and constrain source variability. The SAGE data are nonproprietary. The data processing includes IRAC and MIPS pipelines and a database for mining the point-source catalogs, which will be released to the community in support of Spitzer proposal cycles 4 and 5. We present initial results on the epoch 1 data for a region near N79 and N83. The MIPS 70 and 160 m images of the diffuse dust emission of the N79/N83 region reveal a similar distribution to the gas emissions, especially the H i 21 cm emission. The measured point-source sensitivity for the epoch 1 data is consistent with expectations for the survey. The point-source counts are highest for the IRAC 3.6 m band and decrease dramatically toward longer wavelengths, A

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We have determined the fraction of barred galaxies in the H-band for a statistically well-defined sample of 186 spirals drawn from the Ohio State University Bright Spiral Galaxy survey. We find 56% of our sample to be strongly barred at H, while another 16% is weakly barred. Only 27% of our sample is unbarred in the near-infrared. The RC3 and the Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies both classify only about 30% of our sample as strongly barred. Thus strong bars are nearly twice as prevalent in the near-infrared as in the optical.The frequency of genuine optically hidden bars is significant, but lower than many claims in the literature: 40% of the galaxies in our sample that are classified as unbarred in the RC3 show evidence for a bar in the H-band, while for the Carnegie Atlas this fraction is 66%. Our data reveal no significant trend in bar fraction as a function of morphology in either the optical or H-band.Optical surveys of high redshift galaxies may be strongly biased against finding bars, as bars are increasingly difficult to detect at bluer rest wavelengths.

Broad band /, 7/, K photometry and narrow band CO and H 2 0 indices have been obtained for 89 luminous red stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and 21 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), chosen largely from the sample of Blanco, McCarthy, and Blanco. Most are known to be carbon stars, and their infrared properties are compared with new observations of 33 galactic carbon stars. The bolometric luminosity distributions of an unbiased sample of Magellanic Cloud carbon stars are compared with those predicted from evolutionary calculations by Renzini and Voli for double shell burning stars undergoing He shell flashes. The observed and theoretical distributions disagree markedly: nearly all the observed stars have lower luminosities than even the faintest theoretical carbon star. In addition, we find many fewer than expected high luminosity stars with initial mass greater than 3 M 0. Possible explanations for this include a steep initial mass function for intermediate mass stars, a star formation rate significantly higher in the past than at present, or a neglected physical effect, such as underestimation of the importance of mass loss. Nevertheless, it appears that the hypothesis that He shell flashes lead to a dredge-up of carbon into the envelope, which results in a carbon star, can be maintained, if dredging occurs after fewer shell flashes than are predicted by presently available stellar evolutionary calculations. The colors and indices of the late M giants in the LMC field are similar to those of late M giants in the Galaxy. The narrow band infrared data are interpreted qualitatively in terms of the effects of molecular band absorption, which also strongly influences the infrared broad band colors of carbon stars. The small differences in the color-color relationships of the SMC and LMC samples are consistent with the differences in heavy metal abundance between the LMC, SMC, and Galaxy.