Related papers: A Bayesian Approach Accounting for Stochastic Fluc…
Star clusters are studied widely both as benchmarks for stellar evolution models and in their own right. Cluster age and mass distributions within galaxies are probes of star formation histories, and of cluster formation and disruption…
Integrated spectrophotometric properties of stellar systems are intrinsically dispersed due to the stochastic nature of the small numbers of bright stars they contain. Among clusters, only the most massive ones can be used individually for…
The fundamental properties of stellar clusters, such as the age or the total initial mass in stars, are often inferred from population synthesis models. The predicted properties are then used to constrain the physical mechanisms involved in…
Since the early 1970s, stellar population modelling has been one of the basic tools for understanding the physics of unresolved systems from observation of their integrated light. Models allow us to relate the integrated spectra (or…
Stochasticity of bright stars introduces uncertainty and bias into derived structural parameters of star clusters. We have simulated a grid of cluster $V$-band images, observed with Subaru Suprime-Cam with age, mass, and size representing a…
We present a Bayesian inference approach to estimating the cumulative mass profile and mean squared velocity profile of a globular cluster given the spatial and kinematic information of its stars. Mock globular clusters with a range of…
The integrated properties of young star clusters are subject to large cluster-to-cluster variations because they depend directly on small numbers of bright stars. At ages at which red supergiants are expected to exist, these luminous but…
In this paper, I review to what extent we can understand the photometric properties of star clusters, and of low-mass, unresolved galaxies, in terms of population synthesis models designed to describe `simple stellar populations' (SSPs),…
Stellar evolution theory has been extraordinarily successful at explaining the different phases under which stars form, evolve and die. While the strongest constraints have traditionally come from binary stars, the advent of…
We present Monte Carlo models of open stellar clusters with the purpose of mapping out the behavior of integrated colors with mass and age. Our cluster simulation package allows for stochastic variations in the stellar mass function to…
The apparent age and mass of a stellar cluster can be strongly affected by stochastic sampling of the stellar initial mass function, when inferred from the integrated color of low mass clusters (less than ~10^4 solar masses). We use…
It takes years of effort employing the best telescopes and instruments to obtain high-quality stellar photometry, astrometry, and spectroscopy. Stellar evolution models contain the experience of lifetimes of theoretical calculations and…
Stellar population synthesis techniques for predicting the observable light emitted by a stellar population have extensive applications in numerous areas of astronomy. However, accurate predictions for small populations of young stars, such…
We present age measurements for 195 star clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud based on comparison of integrated colors measured from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey with models of simple stellar populations. We find that the…
Observations of the spatial distributions of young stars in star-forming regions can be linked to the theory of clustered star formation using spatial statistical methods. The MYStIX project provides rich samples of young stars from the…
Integrated spectroscopy is the method of choice for deriving the ages of unresolved stellar systems. However, hot stellar evolutionary stages, such as hot horizontal branch stars and blue straggler stars (BSSs), can affect the integrated…
In this paper I combine the results of a set of population synthesis models with simple Montecarlo simulations of stochastic effects in the number of stars occupying sparsely populated stellar evolutionary phases, to show that the scatter…
We present and implement a probabilistic (Bayesian) method for producing catalogs from images of stellar fields. The method is capable of inferring the number of sources N in the image and can also handle the challenges introduced by noise,…
We investigate a novel Bayesian analysis method, based on the Stochastically Lighting Up Galaxies (slug) code, to derive the masses, ages, and extinctions of star clusters from integrated light photometry. Unlike many analysis methods, slug…
The presence or absence of star clusters in galaxies, and the properties of star cluster populations compared to their host galaxy properties, are important observables for validating models of cluster formation, galaxy formation, and…