Study of star clusters populations in the Magellanic Cloud

The Magellanic Clouds (MCs), neighbouring galaxies to the Milky Way (MW), consist of a pair of irregular type of galaxies : Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Recent proper motion study of MCs suggested that they are interacting with each other, as well as with the MW. The Magellanic Bridge connecting both Clouds and the Magellanic Stream are the witnesses to these interactions. The interactions between the MCs could have triggered star formation in both the galaxies, which can be confirmed by studying formation and evolution history of star clusters in the MCs. Proximity of MCs and their location at high galactic latitude enables us to resolve their individual populations as well as detect faint stellar populations within them using ground based telescopes under good seeing conditions. Though ∼4000 clusters in the MCs have been catalogued, only 50% of the clusters have information about age and reddening. Therefore, it is necessary to age-date the identified clusters to understand the demographics of cluster formation. We estimated parameters (age and reddening) of a large number of clusters (∼1200) to understand demographics of cluster formation and signatures of interactions using the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment III data. In the talk, I will discuss about the timescale of burst of cluster formation and propagation of cluster formation in the two Clouds and their corelation with the interactions, obtained from the study. In our study, we have also examined a massive (105 M sun ) intermediate age (7 Gyr old) SMC cluster (Kron 3) in order to inspect the presence of multiple stellar population within it using multi-wavelength data from UVIT, HST, Gaia and VMC. I will also talk about the advantage of superior resolution of UVIT in the near-UV pass-band in addressing metallicity differences among stars within a cluster.