The Young Intercloud Population. II. The Midwest of the Large Magellanic Cloud

We present BV CCD photometry of a field of blue stars in the midwest of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) located nearly 3° from its center. This stellar population, first noted by M. Pierre (1987), is found to consist of stars of all ages greater than ∼30 Myr along with a substantial 4.5 Gyr old population. This field corresponds to the outermost known region of blue stars in the southwest quadrant of the LMC. The slope of the observed differential luminosity function (LF) for the main-sequence stars is in good agreement with other determinations of LMC field regions but differs significantly from the LF of the intercloud aggregates. We conclude that, because this field does not show, in recent time, any significant burst of star formation, it is not chronologically linked to the LMC/Small Magellanic Cloud close encounter. Therefore, star formation must have taken place continuously in that area for at least ∼1 Gyr.