Stellar density distribution along the minor axis of the Large Magellanic Cloud

A.E. PIATTI

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2018 vol. 473 p. 4410 - 4416

0035-8711

We studied the spatial distribution of young and old stellar populations along the western half part of the minor axis of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) using Washington $MT_1$photometry of selected fields, which span a deprojected distance range from the LMC bar centreout to $sim$ 31.6 kpc. We found that both stellar populations share a mean LMC limiting radius of 8.9$pm$0.4 kpc; old populations are three times more dense that young populationsat that LMC limit. When comparing this result with recent values for the LMC extension due to north, the old populations resulted significantly more elongated than the young ones. Bearing in mind previous claims that the elongation of the outermost LMC regionsmay be due to the tidal effects of the Milky Way (MW), our  findings suggest that such a tidalinteraction should not have taken place recently. The existence of young populationsin the outermost western regions also supports previous results about ram pressure stripping effects of the LMC gaseous disc due to the motion of the LMC in the MW halo.