The Magellanic Clouds - Galactic cannibalism on our night sky

Abstract

The Magellanic Clouds (MCs), the two closest dwarf irregular galaxies to our Milky Way, appear as two milky patches in the southern sky. The MCs have proven both of cultural and scientific interest- the latter, namely, from the mounting evidence that the MC galaxies have repeatedly interacted in the past. The resulting stellar structures seen across the MCs can serve as fossil records of ancient galactic interactions between the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud (LMC/SMC). Modern astrophysical surveys such as the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH) have played a key role in capturing some of the deepest, most intricate images of the MCs and its stellar structures to date. Thanks to SMASH, we can study the MC`s stellar content and obtain detailed, quantitative star formation histories (SFH). SFHs link the starlight observed to the galaxy’s past and present physical properties. Therefore, obtaining SFHs of the MCs can significantly improve our understanding of the processes involved in the evolution and formation of galaxies. In this talk, I present my results on the star formation history of the SMC, going as far back as 12 billion years. I use deep photometric data (g=24 magnitude) from the SMASH survey, which uses the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) on the NOAO Blanco 4m Telescope. I will put my results in the context of the tidal interactions between the SMC and its larger companion, the LMC, to shed light on how the LMC helped shape the SMC to its current form.