ANIR (Atacama Near InfraRed camera) is a near infrared camera for the University of Tokyo Atacama 1m telescope, installed at the summit of Co. Chajnantor (5,640 m altitude) in northern Chile. The high altitude and extremely low water vapor (PWV = 0.5 mm) of the site enable us to perform observation of hydrogen Paα emission line at 1.8751 μm . Since its first light observation in June 2009, we have been carrying out a Paα narrow-band imaging survey of nearby luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs), and have obtained Paα for 38 nearby LIRGs listed in AKARI/FIS-PSC at the velocity of recession between 2,800 km/s and 8,100 km/s. LIRGs are affected by a large amount of dust extinction ( AV~ 3 mag), produced by their active star formation activities. Because Paα is the strongest hydrogen recombination line in the infrared wavelength ranges, it is a good and direct tracer of dust-enshrouded star forming regions, and enables us to probe the star formation activities in LIRGs. We find that LIRGs have two star-forming modes. The origin of the two modes probably come from differences between merging stage and/or star-forming process.

We observed an area of 10 d e g 2 of the Large Magellanic Cloud using the Infrared Camera (IRC) onboard AKARI. The observations were carried out using five imaging filters (3, 7, 11, 15, and 24 μm ) and the prism disperser ( 2 − 5 μm , λ/Δλ ∼ 20 ) equipped in the IRC. This paper presents an outline of the survey project and also describes very briefly the newly compiled near- to mid-infrared point source catalog. The 10σ limiting magnitudes are 17.9, 13.8, 12.4, 9.9, and 8.6 mag at 3.2, 7, 11, 15 and 24 μm , respectively. The photometric accuracy is estimated to be about 0.1 mag at 3.2 μm and 0.06 - 0.07 mag in the other bands. The position accuracy is 0.3" at 3.2, 7 and 11 μm and 1.0" at 15 and 24 μm . The sensitivities at 3.2, 7, and 24 μm are roughly comparable to those of the Spitzer SAGE LMC point source catalog, while the AKARI catalog provides the data at 11 and 15 μm , covering the near- to mid-infrared spectral range continuously.