PANCAKE: Python bAsed Numerical Color-magnitude-diagram Analysis pacKagE
Abstract
Stellar populations serve as a fossil record of galaxy formation and evolution, providing crucial information about the history of star formation and galaxy evolution. The color-magnitude diagram (CMD) stands out as the most accurate tool currently available for inferring the star formation histories (SFHs) of nearby galaxies with stellar-resolved multiband data. The launch of new space telescopes, including JWST, EUCLID, and the upcoming CSST and Roman, will significantly increase the number of stellar-resolved galaxies over the next decade. A user-friendly and customizable CMD fitting package would be valuable for galaxy evolution studies with these data. We develop an open-source Python-based package named \textsc{pancake}, which is fast and accurate in determining SFHs and stellar population parameters in nearby galaxies. We have validated our method via a series of comprehensive tests. First, \textsc{pancake} performs well on mock data, meanwhile the random and systematic uncertainties are quantified. Second, \textsc{pancake} performs well on observational data containing a star cluster and 38 dwarf galaxies (50 fields). Third, the star formation rate (SFR) from \textsc{pancake} is consistent with the SFR from FUV photometry. To ensure compatibility and accuracy, we have included isochrone libraries generated using PARSEC for most of the optical and near-infrared filters used in space telescopes such as HST, JWST, and the upcoming CSST.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.04534,
title = {PANCAKE: Python bAsed Numerical Color-magnitude-diagram Analysis pacKagE},
author = {Yun Zheng and Yujiao Yang and Yong-kun Zhang and Zheng Zheng and Jing Wang and Lister Staveley-Smith and Chao-Wei Tsai and Di Li and Chao Liu and Jingjing Hu and Huaxi Chen and Donghui Quan and Yinghui Zheng and Hangyuan Li},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.04534},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
26 pages, 24 figures, accepted by APJS