Astronomy & Astrophysics manuscript no. niederhofer˙final c ESO 2018 November 5, 2018 Controversial Age Spreads from the Main Sequence Turn-Off and Red Clump in Intermediate-Age Clusters in the LMC ? F. Niederhofer1;2, N. Bastian3, V. Kozhurina-Platais4, M. Hilker1;5, S. E. de Mink6, I. Cabrera-Ziri3;5, C. Li7;8;9, and B. Ercolano1;2 1 Excellence Cluster Origin and Structure of the Universe, Boltzmannstr. 2, D-85748 Garching bei Munchen,¨ Germany e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Universitats-Sternwarte¨ Munchen,¨ Scheinerstraße 1, D-81679 Munchen,¨ Germany 3 Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, 146 Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L3 5RF, UK 4 Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA 5 European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2, D-85748 Garching bei Munchen,¨ Germany 6 Astronomical Institute Anton Pannekoek, Amsterdam University, Science Park 904, 1098 XH, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 7 Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China 8 Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China 9 Department of Astronomy, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China Preprint online version: November 5, 2018 ABSTRACT Most star clusters at an intermediate age (1-2 Gyr) in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds show a puzzling feature in their color- magnitude diagrams (CMD) that is not in agreement with a simple stellar population. The main sequence turn-off of these clusters is much broader than would be expected from photometric uncertainties. One interpretation of this feature is that age spreads of the order 200-500 Myr exist within individual clusters, although this interpretation is highly debated.