Searching for an Intrinsic Stellar Population in Compact HighVelocity Clouds.pdfVIP

Searching for an Intrinsic Stellar Population in Compact High-Velocity Clouds ∗ Ulrich Hopp (hopp@usm.uni-muenchen.de) Universit¨ats-Sternwarte M¨unchen, Scheiner-Str.1, D 81679 Munich, Germany Regina E. Schulte-Ladbeck (rsl@phyast.pitt.edu) University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA 2 0 J¨urgen Kerp (jkerp@astro.uni-bonn.de) 0 Radioastronomisches Institut der Universit¨at Bonn, Auf dem H¨ugel 71, Bonn, 2 Germany p e Abstract. We are investigating the hypothesis that Compact High–Velocity Clouds S (CHVCs) are the left-over building blocks of Local Group galaxies. To this end, we 0 are searching for their embedded stellar populations using FORS at the VLT. The 2 search is done with single-star photometry in V and I bands, which is sensitive to both, young and old, stellar populations. Five CHVCs of our sample have been 1 observed so far down to I=24. We pointed the VLT towards the highest HI column v density regions, as determined in Effelsberg radio data. In an alternate approach, 9 we searched 2MASS public data towards those 5 CHVCs down to K=16. While the 2 VLT data probe the central regions out to distance moduli of about 27, the 2MASS 4 data are sensitive to a population of red giant stars to distance moduli of about 20. 9 0 The 2MASS data, on the other hand, cover a much wider field of view than the VLT 2 data (radius of 1 degree versus FORS field of 6.8 arcmin). We did not find a stellar