The main sources of data for low dispersion objective-prism surveys of the Milky Way undertaken in the last fifteen years for the study of the distribution of late type stars, namely M and C stars, are summarized in Table 1.

Radio molecular observations in the millimeter wavelength region in the last decade have revealed a number of giant molecular cloud complexes at relatively high galactic latitudes. Examples for such cloud complexes are Cepheus Flare (Lebrun 1986), and Ursa Major and Camelopardalis clouds (Heithausen et al. 1993). Because of their high galactic latitudes, these cloud complexes probably belong to the nearest molecular clouds and among them we may find some nearby regions of low-mass star formation.

Observations in the directions of about a dozen OB stellar associations have been carried out with the UV space telescope Glazar, which has been functioning at the Mir Space Station since 1987.

During our programme for nonstable and flare star investigations in the star forming regions, more than 290 UBVR photographic plates in the field of the bright nebula NGC 7129 were obtained. The photographic observations were made with the 50/70/172 cm Schmidt telescope of the Rozhen Astronomical Observatory of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences during the period September 1984–July 1993.

The binaries-in-clusters program of the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory has targeted eclipsing binaries in galactic star clusters since 1975. The program uses a boot strap method: fundamental star data are obtained from light curve analysis and these data then elucidate the properties of the cluster environment, such as the distance, reddening, and, through isochrone fittings, information about the age and evolution of both binary components and the cluster as a whole. Here we discuss its current status and the increasingly important role of all-cluster direct and spectroscopic imaging.

To test the performance of the WWFPP in polarimetric mode, we performed surface polarimetry of the Crab nebula in February 1993 using the Asiago 1.82 m telescope of the ‘Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova’. The polarimeter is a new design and enables us to do simultaneous wide-field polarimetry (15 × 15 arcmin field with 0.43 arcsec/pixel) of four polarization angles using a twin Wollaston prism or simultaneous polarimetry of two angles using a double wedge plate with orthogonal sheet polarizers in combination with an achromatic half wave plate. For the observations described here we used the twin Wollaston. The advantages of this design are independency of fluctuations of atmospheric transmission and identical seeing for one set of Stokes parameters. The results of the observations are in agreement with results of other investigators who performed surface polarimetry of the Crab Nebula.

We present results from narrow band CCD images in Hα + [N II] and [O III] of very faint, nearby (less than 0.5 kpc) planetary nebulae (PNe), of large angular extent.

The instrumental set up used (Mount Skinakas Wide Field Camera) is capable of detecting structures of large angular extent as faint as 10−17 ergs sec−1 cm−2 arcsec−2.

New faint structures are revealed mostly at large distances from the suspected central star of the PNe studied. These structures are atypical of the PNe population and hard to reconcile with the interacting stellar wind evolutionary scenario. They are rather reminiscent of the interaction of the former Red Giant Envelope with the ambient Interstellar Medium.

The characteristics of this aged sample are asymmetric emission distribution, displacement of the central star, extremely low expansion velocities, concentrations along the stellar motion, with the [O III] emission amorphous and confined close to the center of the PN while the Hα + [N II] emission is structured and more extended.

Recent results on global properties of the Magellanic Clouds are reviewed, with particular emphasis on the impact of wide-field techniques on their study. The subjects discussed include large-scale surveys of different tracers of intermediate age and old populations in the Clouds and new data on their chemical evolution, kinematics and spatial motion.

The location of the LMC clusters, their age distribution and dynamical parameters have shown that two star cluster systems exist in this galaxy: 1) one extended system, elliptical in shape, which contains all intermediate and old star clusters and 2) another system, again elliptical, but smaller in diameter, superimposed on the other and inclined by about 50 degrees from the latter. It contains the most massive, very young globular clusters which are still at their early phases of dynamical evolution. The existence of very rich stellar associations, binary star clusters and very elliptical ones located in this system, indicates that massive star clusters have formed very recently and are still under formation.

In 1990 we began an Ha survey of the Milky Way and the Magellanic clouds at ESO La Silla with a 36 cm telescope. The main goal of this survey is to study in detail complexes of HII regions, as well as the global spiral structure of our Galaxy.

The Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stage is the normal luminous phase of evolution of intermediate-mass stars (slightly less than 1 M⊙ up to very roughly 3 M⊙) and therefore the AGB stars play a noteworthy role in our understanding of the chemical evolution of galactic systems. Furthermore it is now generally accepted that the ratio of carbon (C) stars to late-type M giant stars can be used to estimate the mean metallicity of the stellar population of a system, or the change in metallicity from the inner to the outer parts of a galaxy. It is for these reasons among others that red giant stars have been searched for in nearby local group galaxies, principally in our nearest neighbours, the Magellanic Clouds and the dwarf spheroidal galaxies. This paper will be particularly devoted to the slitless spectroscopy surveys for carbon stars in the Magellanic Clouds.

More than 1000 new carbon stars have been identified in a ∼200 deg2 area of the SMC during a survey of UK Schmidt Telescope objective-prism plates. Their spatial distribution is like that of the red horizontal branch stars.

Star formation in galaxies is a major astrophysical problem which can be investigated in several ways. The distribution and loci of all kinds of young objects, including OB associations, young clusters, HII regions, GMCs, Bok globules, dark clouds, dust lanes, protostars, as well as YSOs detected in NIR and FIR surveys constitute the principal signposts for this investigation. The individual nature of all these objects has been and is still continously studied. However it is also extremely interesting to associate the coexistence of these objects, and their relation to the structure of the parent galaxy. Such studies have been carried out by several investigators and are frequently summarized when star formation processes are examined.

The distribution of spectral types in 64 LMC globular clusters and their adjoining fields have been studied.

Shapley Constellation III in the north of the LMC is one of the largest associations in the LMC. It is surrounded by a ring of H II regions and diffuse H II filaments called Supergiant Shell LMC 4 (Goudis & Meaburn 1978). LMC 4 is suspected to be a site of large scale propagation of star formation (Dopita et al. 1985), but recent studies (Reid et al. 1987; Vallenari et al. 1993) show that the situation is far from simple.

Dwarf Spheroidal (dSph) galaxies are the faintest baryonic systems recognized as galaxies. Understanding the structure and stellar populations of these systems is critical for the modelling of their formation and evolution, and by extension, for understanding the general problem of galaxy formation and evolution. Further, as dSphs are the only available probes of the distant halo of the Galaxy, understanding their structure is a crucial step in the study of the gravitational potential of the halo and the mass of the Galaxy. I will not attempt to review fully all current topics of dSph research. Instead, I will concentrate specifically on those issues that are directly related (as I see it) to the overall topic of wide-field imaging. Recent reviews covering other aspects of dSph research have been written by DaCosta (1988, 1992) and Pryor (1992).

Palomar and Tautenburg Schmidt plates with a base line of about 35 years have been measured with the Automated Photographic Measuring (APM) system in Cambridge (UK) in order to obtain the proper motions of the Galactic dwarf spheroidal satellites (dSph) in Draco and Ursa Minor with respect to a well defined extragalactic reference frame. The investigations were encouraged by the accuracy level achieved for the mean absolute proper motions of galactic globular clusters (0.05 arcsec/century from 25 years base line Tautenburg plate pairs) which is comparable to the expected proper motion of the Draco and Ursa Minor dSph assuming tangential motions of about 100 km/s. Different methods for the removal of systematic errors in the absolute proper motion introduced by the measuring and reduction process are discussed. The more accurate relative proper motions of individual stars in both dSphs obtained by Stetson (1980) and by Cudworth, Olszewski & Schommer (1986) provide an external comparison and are also used to obtain the mean absolute proper motion of the dSphs.

During the past few years there have been a number of surveys for low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs). Searches using both photographic and CCD data have shown that LSBGs are actually very numerous (Impey, Bothun & Malin 1987; Irwin et al. 1990). However, they are seriously biased against in any random sky survey, and even in a cluster area there are inherent size and signal-to-noise problems. The number of objects we can detect are therefore limited in two ways.

In recent years, especially following the work of Binggeli et al. (1985) on the Virgo Cluster, there has been a great surge of interest in low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs). One of the most important questions, of course, is — how many LSBGs are there? Here we present some results from recent surveys which have been carried out in Cardiff in an effort to shed light on this problem.

Algorithms employed to identify and quantify images on digitised images mostly employ contiguous-pixel (e.g. PISA [based on APM software by Irwin {1985}]) or median-filtering techniques and thus miss extended low surface-brightness features. Searches for low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs) have therefore so far concentrated on eye-ball searches of Schmidt survey plates. To overcome the subjectiveness of eyeball searches and eliminate the inherent problems in current object-detection algorithms we have investigated other techniques.