| Abstract : | The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the nearest gas-rich irregular
dwarf satellites of the Milky Way. Its evolution is affected by its interaction
with its companion, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and/or with the Milky
Way. With its widespread star formation and low metallicity, the SMC is one
of the best test beds to study star formation and evolution in the interacting
environment. The shell region in the North-Eastern SMC is a tidally affected
region that shows the recent star formation. Our aim is to understand the spatial
distribution, age dating, and kinematics of this part of the tidally affected SMC
disk, primarily due to its recent interaction with the LMC ∼ 250 Myr ago.
We obtained the Far-UV (FUV) images of eleven fields of the Shell region
in the North-East SMC using the UltraViolet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) on
AstroSat, the first Indian Space observatory. We created science-ready images
and performed the PSF photometry. We cross-matched the detected FUV stars
with the GAIA EDR3 data and eliminated the foreground stars to create a
Far UV catalog of a few thousand stars younger than ∼ 600 Myr. We created
FUV-optical color-magnitude diagrams and estimated the ages of the stellar
population using isochrones to map the morphology, density, and tidal features
present in this part of the SMC disk. The identified episodes of star formation
are used to constrain the details of the recent interaction of the SMC with the
LMC. We also estimated the dispersion in the proper motion of the young and
old stars to explore the kinematics of the outer SMC disk. |
