Illustrating the selection and validation of the LMC sample. (a) Colour-magnitude diagram for the original sample centred on (l_C, b_C). (b) Joint distribution for the original sample of parallax and Δμ_N, the normalised proper-motion difference to the fitted model. The vertical line marks the cut-off used for the selection based on proper motions. (c) Colour-magnitude diagram for the sub-sample with Δμ_N < 10. (d–f) Same as (a–c), but for a sample centred on (l_C − 10°, b_C), containing far fewer LMC stars, but roughly the same number of Galactic foreground stars as in (a–c).