Description
In the third part of our photometric study of the star-forming region NGC 346/N66 and its surrounding field in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), we focus on the large number of low-mass pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope observations with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. We investigate the origin of the observed broadening of the PMS population in the V-I,V color-magnitude diagram. The most likely explanations are either the presence of differential reddening or an age spread among the young stars.
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