Multiple populations of Hbeta emission line stars in the Large
  Magellanic Cloud cluster NGC1971
  We revisited the young Large Magellanic Cloud star cluster NGC1971 with the
aim of providing additional clues to our understanding of its observed extended
Main Sequence turnoff (eMSTO), a feature common seen in young stars clusters,
which was recently argued to be caused by a real age spread similar to the
cluster age (~160 Myr). We combined accurate Washington and Stromgren
photometry of high membership probability stars to explore the nature of such
an eMSTO. From different ad hoc defined pseudo colors we found that bluer and
redder stars distributed throughout the eMSTO do not show any inhomogeneities
of light and heavy-element abundances. These 'blue' and 'red' stars split into
two clearly different groups only when the Washington $M$ magnitudes are
employed, which delimites the number of spectral features responsible for the
appearance of the eMSTO. We speculate that Be stars populate the eMSTO of
NGC1971 because: i) Hbeta contributes to the M passband; ii) Hbeta emissions
are common features of Be stars and; iii) Washington M and T1 magnitudes show a
tight correlation; the latter measuring the observed contribution of Halpha
emission line in Be stars, which in turn correlates with Hbeta emissions. As
far as we are aware, this is the first observational result pointing to Hbeta
emissions as the origin of eMSTOs observed in young star clusters. The presence
outcome will certainly open new possibilities of studying eMSTO from
photometric systems with passbands centered at features commonly seen in Be
stars.
