Rationale

The "VI VISCACHA meeting" is the sixth edition of the annual international scientific meeting of the VISCACHA collaboration, where the latest scientific results will be presented, new ideas discussed, ongoing projects developed, and the next steps and goals of the collaboration planned. It is an open meeting for the academic community, aiming to expand the collaboration, particularly in the state of Rio de Janeiro, where this edition will take place.

The collaboration leads the VISCACHA survey, an ongoing observational project with the goal of studying star clusters in the outskirts of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC), two dwarf satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. The aim is to decipher their interaction history and possible future by comparing observational constraints obtained on large scales (e.g., metallicity gradients, star formation history, three-dimensional structure, tidal reach) with predictions from galactic dynamics models.

VISCACHA is the project with the highest cumulative granted observation time on the SOAR telescope (>400 hours), having observed more than 200 star clusters on the outskirts of the LMC and SMC over the last eight years, with exceptional quality thanks to the use of the Adaptive Optics Module (SAM). Thus, our team has considerable experience in acquiring, processing, and analyzing the data collected from this facility, which are presented and shared with the community during our meetings.

With members in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico (in addition to five Brazilian institutions), the annual meeting is an excellent opportunity for involved students to exchange experiences, present their work, and establish important connections with other institutions. The annual meeting is also crucial for a broader discussion of recent collaboration results, often produced by local subgroups, and their contextualization within current literature, helping to enhance the productivity and impact of the group.