We recover the spatially resolved star formation history across the entire main body and Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud ( SMC ) , using fourteen deep tile images from the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds ( VMC ) , in the YJ \mbox { $K _ { s } $ } filters .
The analysis is performed on 168 subregions of size 0.143 deg ^ { 2 } , covering a total contiguous area of 23.57 deg ^ { 2 } .
We apply a colour–magnitude diagram ( CMD ) reconstruction method that returns the best-fitting star formation rate SFR ( t ) , age–metallicity relation , distance and mean reddening , together with their confidence intervals , for each subregion .
With respect to previous analyses , we use a far larger set of VMC data , updated stellar models , and fit the two available CMDs ( Y - K _ { s } versus K _ { s } and J - K _ { s } versus K _ { s } ) independently .
The results allow us to derive a more complete and more reliable picture of how the mean distances , extinction values , star formation rate , and metallicities vary across the SMC , and provide a better description of the populations that form its Bar and Wing .
We conclude that the SMC has formed a total mass of ( 5.31 \pm 0.05 ) \times 10 ^ { 8 } \mathrm { M } _ { \odot } in stars over its lifetime .
About two thirds of this mass is expected to be still locked in stars and stellar remnants .
50 per cent of the mass was formed prior to an age of 6.3 Gyr , and 80 per cent was formed between 8 and 3.5 Gyr ago .
We also illustrate the likely distribution of stellar ages and metallicities in different parts of the CMD , to aid the interpretation of data from future astrometric and spectroscopic surveys of the SMC .