SCYON Abstract

Received on November 29 2001

Accurate Stellar Population Studies from Multiband Photometric Observations

AuthorsMartino Romaniello(1), Nino Panagia(2), Salvatore Scuderi(3), & Robert P. Kirshner(4)
Affiliation(1) ESO, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching bei München, Germany
(2) Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218
(3) Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania, Viale A. Doria 6, I-95125, Catania, Italy
(4) Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Accepted byThe Astronomical Journal
Contactmromanie@eso.org
URLhttp://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0111399 | www.eso.org/~mromanie/accurate.ps.gz
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Abstract

We present a new technique based on multi-band near ultraviolet and optical photometry to measure both the stellar intrinsic properties, i.e. luminosity and effective temperature, and the interstellar dust extinction along the line of sight to hundreds of stars per square arcminute. The yield is twofold. On the one hand, the resulting reddening map has a very high spatial resolution, of the order of a few arcseconds, and can be quite effectively used in regions where the interstellar material is patchy, thus producing considerable differential extinction on small angular scales. On the other hand, combining the photometric information over a wide baseline in wavelength provides an accurate determination of temperature and luminosity for thousands of stars. As a test case, we present the results for the region around Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud imaged with the WFPC2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope.