Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-08-14
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
6 pages, 5 figures, to appear in IAU Symposium 266 on Star Clusters
Scientific paper
I analyze the stochastic effects introduced by the sampling of the stellar initial mass function (SIMF) in the derivation of the individual masses and the cluster mass function (CMF) from broad-band visible-NIR unresolved photometry. The classical method of using unweighted UBV photometry to simultaneously establish ages and extinctions of stellar clusters is found to be unreliable for clusters older than approx. 30 Ma, even for relatively large cluster masses. On the other hand, augmenting the filter set to include longer-wavelength filters and using weights for each filter increases the range of masses and ages that can be accurately measured with unresolved photometry. Nevertheless, a relatively large range of masses and ages is found to be dominated by SIMF sampling effects that render the observed masses useless, even when using UBVRIJHK photometry.
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