The analysis of isochrone fitting methods for red giant branch photometry, and tip red giant branch distance determination

被引:10
作者
Frayn, CM [1 ]
Gilmore, GF [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Cambridge, Inst Astron, Cambridge CB3 0HA, England
关键词
methods : data analysis; stars : distances; Hertzsprung-Russell (HR) diagram; stars : Population II; galaxies : distances and redshifts; galaxies : haloes;
D O I
10.1046/j.1365-8711.2003.06250.x
中图分类号
P1 [天文学];
学科分类号
0704 ;
摘要
We consider the procedure of isochrone fitting and its application to the study of red giant branch (RGB) photometry in old stellar populations. This is extended to consider the problems introduced by the inclusion of lower-magnitude regions of the colour-magnitude diagram. We refer especially to our previous paper, where the details of our isochrone interpolation and fitting code are explained. We address the systematic errors inherent in the process of isochrone fitting, and we investigate the extent to which simple stellar populations can be recovered from noisy photometric data. We investigate the effects caused by inaccurate distance estimates, isochrone model variation and photometric errors. We present results from two studies of approximately coeval stellar populations, those of the Milky Way globular cluster system, and the Ursa Minor dwarf spheroidal galaxy. In addition, we introduce a new method for estimating distances using photometry of the tip of the RGB, which is significantly more robust than the standard edge-detection filter.
引用
收藏
页码:887 / 896
页数:10
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