Deriving Star Formation Histories: Evolutionary or Population Synthesis Codes versus Color-Magnitude Diagrams

Alloin, Danielle; Gallart, Carme; Fleurence, Emmanuel; Pompei, Emanuela; Raimann, Daniel; Fritze-von Alvensleben, Uta; Yi, Sukyoung
Bibliographical reference

Astrophysics and Space Science, v. 281, Issue 1, p. 109-113 (2002).

Advertised on:
7
2002
Number of authors
7
IAC number of authors
0
Citations
6
Refereed citations
3
Description
The goal of this project is to analyze the integrated-light spectrum of a region in the LMC bar, for which HST images are already available yielding color-magnitude diagrams reaching the oldest main-sequence turnoff. Then, we can derive the star formation history in this field through evolutionary/population synthesis of the integrated light from 330 to 990 nm by a variety of independent methods and compare the results with the - in principle - more reliable results derived from the analysis of the color-magnitude diagram (CMD). This confrontation is the key ‘truth-test’ needed for the understanding of the abilities and the limitations of the evolutionary/population synthesis methods that must be applied of necessity to unresolved nearby and far-away galaxies. We report here on the observational part of the project.
Type