We present photometry and a preliminary interpretation of a UBVR survey of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds , which covers 14.5 deg ^ { 2 } and 7.2 deg ^ { 2 } , respectively .
This study is aimed at obtaining well-calibrated data on the brighter , massive stars , complementing recent , deeper CCD surveys .
Our catalog contains 179,655 LMC and 84,995 SMC stars brighter than V \sim 18.0 , and is photometrically complete to U \sim B \sim V \sim 15.7 , and R \sim 15.2 , although stars in crowded regions are selectively missed .
We provide tentative cross-reference between our catalog stars and the stars with existing spectroscopy .
Our photometry agrees well with the photoelectric work in V and B–V , and agrees well for U–B for the bluest stars , but we find a large discrepancy ( 0.3 mag ) in the U–B color at U–B \sim 0.0 .
Examination of the colors of stars with known spectral types suggests that the problem may lie with the photoelectric data .
We discuss the population of stars seen towards the two Clouds , identifying the features in the color-magnitude diagram , and using existing spectroscopy to help construct H-R diagrams .
We derive improved values for the blue to red star ratios in the two Clouds , emphasizing the uncertainties involved in this before additional spectroscopy .
We compare the relative number of RSGs and Wolf-Rayet stars in the LMC and SMC with that of other galaxies in the Local Group , demonstrating a very strong , tight trend with metallicity , with the ratio changing by a factor of 160 from the SMC to M31 .
We also reinvestigate the initial mass function of the massive stars found outside of the OB associations .
With the newer data , we find that the IMF slope of this field population is very steep , with \Gamma \sim - 4 \pm 0.5 , in agreement with our earlier work .
This is in sharp contrast to the IMF slope found for the massive stars with OB associations ( \Gamma \sim - 1.3 ) .
Although much more spectroscopy is needed to make this result firm , incompleteness can no longer be invoked as an explanation .