Bridge over troubled gas: clusters and associations under the SMC and
  LMC tidal stresses
  We obtained SOAR telescope B and V photometry of 14 star clusters and 2
associations in the Bridge tidal structure connecting the LMC and SMC. These
objects are used to study the formation and evolution of star clusters and
associations under tidal stresses from the Clouds. Typical star clusters in the
Bridge are not richly populated and have in general relatively large diameters
(~30-35 pc), being larger than Galactic counterparts of similar age. Ages and
other fundamental parameters are determined with field-star decontaminated
photometry. A self-consistent approach is used to derive parameters for the
most-populated sample cluster NGC 796 and two young CMD templates built with
the remaining Bridge clusters. We find that the clusters are not coeval in the
Bridge. They range from approximately a few Myr (still related to optical HII
regions and WISE and Spitzer dust emission measurements) to about 100-200 Myr.
The derived distance moduli for the Bridge objects suggests that the Bridge is
a structure connecting the LMC far-side in the East to the foreground of the
SMC to the West. Most of the present clusters are part of the tidal dwarf
candidate D 1, which is associated with an H I overdensity. We find further
evidence that the studied part of the Bridge is evolving into a tidal dwarf
galaxy, decoupling from the Bridge.
