Brown dwarfs (hereafter BDs) are of particular interest because of their extremely low-temperature atmospheres for comparison with atmospheres of giant planets. Aiming to obtain clues to understand the formation and disappearance of dust clouds and molecular abundances in BD photospheres, we conducted an observation programme of space-borne near-infrared spectroscopy of bright BDs with the Infrared Camera (IRC) on-board AKARI.

We derive photometric metallicities for 56 intermediate-age and old star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud from the slopes of their red-giant branches in near-infrared color–magnitude diagrams (CMDs). The cluster sample covers the LMC bar and disk to a distance of ~2 kpc from the LMC center. The derived cluster metallicity distribution spans a range of [Fe/H] = +0.0 . . . 1.4 and is similar to the metallicity distribution of field stars. We find that the average cluster metallicities in certain fields of the LMC bar and disk may be different, but there seems to be no compelling evidence for a global cluster metallicity gradient in the LMC.

We cross-correlated the OGLE-II database with the SIRIUS JHK survey data in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). After eliminating obvious spurious variables, we determined the pulsation periods for 9 681 stars by applying the Phase Dispersion Minimization (PDM) technique to the OGLE-II data. Based on these data, we studied the period-K magnitude (PK) relations of variable stars in the LMC and found a new sequence. Comparison between the theoretical pulsation model (Wood & Sebo 1996) and observational data suggests that the variable stars on the new sequence are Mira variables pulsating in the first overtone mode.

We found that the OGLE database contains most AGB stars associated with the SMC cluster NGC 419. Combining these data with our near-infrared (NIR) data, we obtained the following results: 1) Almost all AGB stars above the TRGB are variables. 2) Large amplitude variables tend to show more regular light curves. 3) Only the tip AGB stars (in this case, carbon stars) increase their amplitudes with their J – K colors and only the most evolved ones can become large amplitude (Mira-like) variables. 4) AGB variables may explain the sequences found by Wood et al. (1999).