An efficient approach to extract parameters from star cluster CMDs:fitCMD
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: This work presents an approach (fitCMD) designed to obtain a comprehensive set of astrophysical parameters from colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of star clusters. Based on initial mass function (IMF) properties taken from isochrones, fitCMD searches for the values of total (or cluster) stellar mass, age, global metallicity, foreground reddening, distance modulus, and magnitude-dependent photometric completeness that produce the artificial CMD that best reproduces the observed one; photometric scatter is also taken into account in the artificial CMDs. Inclusion of photometric completeness proves to be an important feature of fitCMD, something that becomes apparent especially when luminosity functions are considered. These parameters are used to build a synthetic CMD that also includes photometric scatter. Residual minimization between the observed and synthetic CMDs leads to the best-fitting parameters. When tested against artificial star clusters, fitCMD shows to be efficient in terms of both computational time and ability to recover the input values.
Author: Charles Bonatto
Institution: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2902121778