A state-of-the-art analysis of the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822
  We present a detailed photometric study of the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC
6822 aimed at investigating the properties of its stellar populations and, in
particular, the presence of stellar radial gradients. Our goal is to analyse
the stellar populations in six fields, which cover the whole bar of this dwarf
galaxy. We derived the quantitative star formation history (SFH) of the six
fields using the IAC method, involving IAC-pop/MinnIAC codes. The solutions we
derived show an enhanced star formation rate (SFR) in Fields 1 and 3 during the
past 500 Myr. The SFRs of the other fields are almost extinguished at very
recent epochs and. We study the radial gradients of the SFR and consider the
total mass converted into stars in two time intervals (between 0 and 0.5 Gyr
ago and between 0.5 and 13.5 Gyr ago). We find that the scale lengths of the
young and intermediate-to-old populations are perfectly compatible, with the
exception of the young populations in Fields 1 and 3. The recent SF in these
two fields is greater than in the other ones. This might be an indication that
in these two fields we are sampling incipient spiral arms. Further evidence and
new observations are required to prove this hypothesis. In addition, we derived
the age-metallicity relations. As expected, the metallicity increases with time
for all of the fields. We do not observe any radial gradient in the
metallicity.
