6 Concluding remarks

The catalogue is a suitable tool for the study of late-type stars in the Magellanic Clouds. These studies may involve the statistical separation of various species of stars, i.e. RGB and AGB (both O-rich and C-rich); the characterization of the mass loss properties of these stars, when combined with measurements in the mid and far-IR; the relations of infrared colours and magnitudes with variability, when combined with measurements of light curves (EROS, MACHO) or comparable photometric data (2MASS); the interpretation of the Hertzsprung-Russel diagram through theoretical evolutionary models; the investigation of metallicity effects inside the Magellanic Clouds and in comparison with our own Galaxy; the study of the history of star formation.

Acknowledgements

The authors kindly thank Ian Glass for his useful comments and J.L. Chevassut, F. Tanguy and K. Weestra for their technical support, the whole DENIS staff and all the DENIS observers who collected the data. The DENIS project is supported by the SCIENCE and the Human Capital and Mobility plans of the European Commission under grants CT920791 and CT940627 in France, by l'Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers, the Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, by the State of Baden-Württemberg in Germany, by the DGICYT in Spain, by the Sterrewacht Leiden in Holland, by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) in Italy, by the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung and Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung in Austria, by the Fundation for the development of Scientific Research of the State São Paulo (FAPESP) in Brazil, by the OKTA grants F-4239 and F-013990 in Hungary, and by the ESO C & EE grant A-04-046.