Looking Outside the Galaxy: The Discovery of Chemical Anomalies in Three Old Large Magellanic Cloud Clusters

By using the multifiber spectrograph FLAMES mounted at the ESO-VLT, we have obtained high-resolution spectra for 18 giant stars, belonging to three old globular clusters of the Large Magellanic Cloud (namely NGC 1786, 2210, and 2257). While stars in each cluster showed quite homogeneous iron content, within a few cents of dex (the mean values being Fe/H= -1.75 ± 0.01 dex, -1.65 ± 0.02 dex and -1.95 ± 0.02 dex for NGC 1786, 2210, and 2257, respectively), we have detected significant inhomogeneities for the Na/Fe, Al/Fe, O/Fe, and Mg/Fe abundance ratios, with evidence of O/Fe versus Na/Fe and Mg/Fe versus Al/Fe anticorrelations. The trends detected nicely agree with those observed in Galactic Globular Clusters, suggesting that such abundance anomalies are ubiquitous features of old stellar systems and they do not depend on the parent galaxy environment. In NGC 1786 we also detected two extreme O-poor, Na-rich stars. This is the first time that a firm signature of extreme chemical abundance anomalies has been found in an extragalactic stellar cluster.