Author
Massana, PolNoël, Noelia E D
Nidever, David L
Erkal, Denis
de Boer, Thomas J L
Choi, Yumi
Majewski, Steven R
Olsen, Knut

Monachesi, Antonela

Gallart, Carme

van der Marel, Roeland P
Ruiz-Lara, Tomás
Zaritsky, Dennis
Martin, Nicolas F
Muñoz, Ricardo R
Cioni, Maria-Rosa L
Bell, Cameron P M
Bell, Eric F
Stringfellow, Guy S
Belokurov, Vasily
Monelli, Mateo
Walker, Alistair R
Martínez-Delgado, David
Vivas, A Katherina
Conn, Blair C
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Steward ObservIssue Date
2020-08-18Keywords
techniques: photometricgalaxies: dwarf
galaxies: interactions
galaxies: structure
Hertzsprung-Russell and colour-magnitude diagrams
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESSCitation
Massana, P., Noël, N. E., Nidever, D. L., Erkal, D., de Boer, T. J., Choi, Y., ... & Conn, B. C. (2020). SMASHing the low surface brightness SMC. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 498(1), 1034-1049.Rights
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
The periphery of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) can unlock important information regarding galaxy formation and evolution in interacting systems. Here, we present a detailed study of the extended stellar structure of the SMC using deep colour-magnitude diagrams, obtained as part of the Survey of the MAgellanic Stellar History (SMASH). Special care was taken in the decontamination of our data from Milky Way (MW) foreground stars, including from foreground globular clusters NGC 362 and 47 Tuc. We derived the SMC surface brightness using a `conservative' approach from which we calculated the general parameters of the SMC, finding a staggered surface brightness profile. We also traced the fainter outskirts by constructing a stellar density profile. This approach, based on stellar counts of the oldest main-sequence turn-off stars, uncovered a tidally disrupted stellar feature that reaches as far out as 12 deg from the SMC centre. We also serendipitously found a faint feature of unknown origin located at similar to 14 deg from the centre of the SMC and that we tentatively associated with a more distant structure. We compared our results to in-house simulations of a 1 x 10(9) M-circle dot SMC, finding that its elliptical shape can be explained by its tidal disruption under the combined presence of the MW and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Finally, we found that the older stellar populations show a smooth profile while the younger component presents a jump in the density followed by a flat profile, confirming the heavily disturbed nature of the SMC.ISSN
0035-8711EISSN
1365-2966Version
Final published versionSponsors
National Science Foundationae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/mnras/staa2451