Abstract
Abstract We report the possible discovery of a new stellar system (YMCA-1), identified during a search for small scale overdensities in the photometric data of the YMCA survey. The object’s projected position lies on the periphery of the Large Magellanic Cloud about 13° apart from its center. The most likely interpretation of its color–magnitude diagram, as well as of its integrated properties, is that YMCA-1 may be an old and remote star cluster of the Milky Way at a distance of 100 kpc from the Galactic center. If this scenario could be confirmed, then the cluster would be significantly fainter and more compact than most of the known star clusters residing in the extreme outskirts of the Galactic halo, but quite similar to Laevens 3. However, much deeper photometry is needed to firmly establish the actual nature of the cluster, and the distance to the system.
Highlights
We report the possible discovery of a new stellar system (YMCA-1), identified during a search for small scale overdensities in the photometric data of the YMCA survey
Extending this analysis to newly reduced tiles of the YMCA sample, we discovered what appears as an uncatalogued stellar system placed about 13◦ to the East of the LMC centre
The colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) of YMCa-1 can be fitted with an old and metal-poor ([Fe/H]=-2.0 dex) isochrone of the PARSEC set (Bressan et al 2012), shifted to the distance of 105 kpc and corrected for E(B − V ) = 0.13
Summary
The most likely interpretation of its color-magnitude diagram, as well as of its integrated properties, is that YMCA-1 may be an old and remote star cluster of the Milky Way at a distance of 100 kpc from the Galactic center. Ripepi) is an optical survey carried out with the VLT survey telescope (VST), aimed at exploring the outskirts of the Large and the Small Magellanic Cloud (LMC and SMC, respectively), by collecting deep g and i images and photometry over an area of 110 deg2 (Gatto et al, in preparation).
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