The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment. OGLE-III Photometric Maps of the Small Magellanic Cloud

TL;DR

The paper presents comprehensive, calibrated photometric and astrometric maps of the Small Magellanic Cloud based on OGLE-III data, covering millions of stars over multiple years.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive, high-precision photometric and astrometric catalog of the SMC from OGLE-III, including a unique dataset on the 47 Tucanae cluster.

Findings

Photometric maps of 6.2 million stars in the SMC.

High-quality, calibrated VI photometry and astrometry.

Data available publicly for further research.

Abstract

We present OGLE-III Photometric Maps of the Small Magellanic Cloud. They contain precise, calibrated VI photometry of about 6.2 million stars from 41 OGLE-III fields in the SMC observed regularly in the years 2001-2008 and covering about 14 square degrees in the sky. Also precise astrometry of these objects is provided. One of the fields, SMC140, is centered on the 47 Tucanae Galactic globular cluster providing unique data on this object. We discuss quality of the data and present a few color-magnitude diagrams of the observed fields. All photometric data are available to the astronomical community from the OGLE Internet archive.