Spatial Distribution of Stellar Components in the Magellanic Clouds

Gaia, an ESA mission planned for launch in 2012, will create the largest and most precise three dimensional chart of our Galaxy by providing unprecedented positional and radial velocity measurements for about one billion stars in our Galaxy and throughout the Local Group. It is expected to resolve nearby galaxies in stars, improving greatly our knowledge of them. Our main goal is to obtain the spatial distribution of different stellar components in these galaxies and work towards producing a model of the Magellanic Clouds to be used, among others, in simulations by CU2 (a part of the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium) during the Gaia mission preparation. In this study the Magellanic Clouds are the main targets. Using ground based data from infra-red and optical surveys such as 2MASS and the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey we investigate the spatial distribution of various stellar populations in these galaxies using isodensity maps and radial surface density profiles.