History of star formation in the Milky Way and the Large Magellanic Cloud

from models based on APOGEE chemical abundances (from Christian Hayes of the University of Virginia). The Large Magellanic Cloud curve has been scaled up by a factor of 20 for ease of comparison. While star formation in the Milky Way was rapid at early times and then declined, the history of the Large Magellanic Cloud is almost completely the reverse: star formation was extremely slow at early times and increased dramatically in the last 2 billion years.