Studying the Stellar Populations of the Local Group with VLT

Abstract

The power of high quality imaging combined with the large collecting area of each VLT telescope is impressive, and there are clearly many exciting discoveries waiting to be made. The study of resolved stellar populations will certainly benefit greatly from this new observatory, as with Palomar before. We will now be able to probe a much large range of star forming environment within the Local Group, and specifically very low metallicity regions in nearby dwarf irregular galaxies. The study of individual stars and star-formation regions in the nearby universe is the only way we will understand the observations of galaxy populations at high redshift. We present some initial results from the BVI imaging of the Local Group galaxy Antlia made during FORS1 science verification in January 1999.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the VLT Opening Symposium, held in Antofagasta, Chile in March 199