We discuss H and K observations of three fields in the bulge and disk of M31 obtained with the Altair adaptive optics system and NIRI instrument on Gemini North .
These are the highest resolution and deepest near-infrared observations obtained to date of the inner regions of M31 , and demonstrate the promise of ground-based adaptive optics for studying the crowded regions of nearby galaxies .
We have combined our observations with previously published HST/NICMOS observations of nine M31 fields and have derived the coarse star formation histories of M31 ’ s bulge and inner disk .
From fits to the M _ { K } luminosity functions , we find the stellar population mix to be dominated by old , nearly solar-metallicity stars .
The old populations , which we define as having age \gtrsim 6 Gyr , indeed dominate the star formation histories at all radii independent of the relative contributions of bulge and disk stars .
Although all of our fields contain some bulge contribution , our results suggest that there is no age difference between the bulge and disk to the limit of our precision .