Bibcode
Hidalgo, S. L.; Aparicio, A.; Gallart, C.; Monelli, M.; Stetson, Peter B.; Walker, Alistair R.
Bibliographical reference
NOAO Proposal ID #2010B-0194
Advertised on:
8
2010
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
The Small Magellanic Cloud is a crucial galaxy to understand many
aspects of the formation and evolution of galaxies. We propose to
collect deep photometry in sixteen fields located at galactocentric
distances from R_gc=2 to 4 degrees, in order to obtain color- magnitude
diagrams reaching the oldest main sequence turnoff stars with high
signal-to-noise ratio. These will allow us to derive accurate life- time
star formation histories through comparison with synthetic color
magnitude diagrams. The main outcome of this work will be a
representative characterization of the time and space variations of the
star formation history across the outer disk of the SMC. The range of
galactocentric distances has been selected such that the density of SMC
stars is enough to populate the color-magnitude diagrams of each
observed MOSAIC field with over 50,000 stars, enough for a robust star
formation history determination. We describe our plan for the near
future to obtain the necessary data for other ranges of galactocentric
distances, using the most suitable instruments for each case.