YMCA (Yes, Magellanic Clouds Again) survey

As they also represent the closest pair of galaxies in an ongoing tidal interaction, while simultaneously infalling into the Milky Way halo, they provide a unique opportunity to study in detail an ongoing three-body encounter. We present the "YMCA (Yes, Magellanic Clouds Again) survey: probing the outer regions of the Magellanic system with VST" based on deep optical photometry carried out with the VLT Survey Telescope (VST).

YMCA targeted 110 square degrees, in the g and i filters, in the periphery of both the MCs, including a long strip in between the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The photometry of YMCA is sufficiently deep (50% complete down to g=~23.5-24.0mag) to allow for a detailed analysis of main-sequence stars in regions of the MCs remained relatively unexplored at these faint magnitudes. The resulting colour-magnitude diagrams reveal that the outskirts of the MCs are predominantly characterized by intermediate-age and old stellar populations, with limited or negligible evidence of recent star formation.