An inverse method to interpret colour-magnitude diagrams
Astrophysics
2009-11-07 v1
Abstract
An inverse method is developed to determine the star formation history, the age-metallicity relation, and the IMF slope from a colour-magnitude diagram. The method is applied to the Hipparcos HR diagram. We found that the thin disk of our Galaxy shows a peak of stellar formation 1.6 Gyr ago. The stars close to the Sun have a solar metallicity and a mean IMF index equal to 3.2. However, the model and the evolutionary tracks do not correctly reproduce the horizontal giant branch.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0203074,
title = {An inverse method to interpret colour-magnitude diagrams},
author = {Jean-Luc Vergely and Joachim Koeppen and Daniel Egret and Olivier Bienayme},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0203074},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
14 pages, 11 figures. To be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics