Uncloaking globular clusters in the inner Galaxy

Extensive photometric studies of the globular clusters located towards the center of the Milky Way have been historically neglected. The presence of patchy differential reddening in front of these clusters has proven to be a significant obstacle to their detailed study. We present here a well-defined and reasonably homogeneous photometric database for 25 of the brightest Galactic globular clusters located in the direction of the inner Galaxy. These data were obtained in the B, V, and I bands using the Magellan 6.5m telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. A new technique is extensively used in this paper to map the differential reddening in the individual cluster fields, and to produce cleaner, dereddened color-magnitude diagrams for all the clusters in the database. Subsequent papers will detail the astrophysical analysis of the cluster populations, and the properties of the obscuring material along the clusters' lines of sight.Comment: Accepted for publication in A

MASSCLEANage -- Stellar Cluster Ages from Integrated Colors --

We present the recently updated and expanded MASSCLEANcolors, a database of 70 million Monte Carlo models selected to match the properties (metallicity, ages and masses) of stellar clusters found in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This database shows the rather extreme and non-Guassian distribution of integrated colors and magnitudes expected with different cluster age and mass and the enormous age degeneracy of integrated colors when mass is unknown. This degeneracy could lead to catastrophic failures in estimating age with standard SSP models, particularly if most of the clusters are of intermediate or low mass, like in the LMC. Utilizing the MASSCLEANcolors database, we have developed MASSCLEANage, a statistical inference package which assigns the most likely age and mass (solved simultaneously) to a cluster based only on its integrated broad-band photometric properties. Finally, we use MASSCLEANage to derive the age and mass of LMC clusters based on integrated photometry alone. First we compare our cluster ages against those obtained for the same seven clusters using more accurate integrated spectroscopy. We find improved agreement with the integrated spectroscopy ages over the original photometric ages. A close examination of our results demonstrate the necessity of solving simultaneously for mass and age to reduce degeneracies in the cluster ages derived via integrated colors. We then selected an additional subset of 30 photometric clusters with previously well constrained ages and independently derive their age using the MASSCLEANage with the same photometry with very good agreement. The MASSCLEANage program is freely available under GNU General Public License.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. Full resolution figures available in journal versio

Broad-band photometric evolution of star clusters

I briefly introduce a database of models that describe the evolution of star clusters in several broad-band photometric systems. Models are based on the latest Padova stellar evolutionary tracks - now including the alpha-enhanced case and improved AGB models - and a revised library of synthetic spectra from model atmospheres. As of today, we have revised isochrones in Johnson-Cousins-Glass, HST/WFPC2, HST/NICMOS, Thuan-Gunn, and Washington systems. Several other filter sets are included in a preliminary way, like those used by the EIS and SDSS projects. The database contains also integrated magnitudes of single-burst stellar populations and Monte-Carlo simulations that show the stochastic dispersion of the colours as a function of cluster mass, age, and metallicity. The models are useful for several kinds of studies, including estimates of masses and ages of extragalactic star clusters observed by means of broad-band photometry.Comment: 5 pages, to appear in Extragalactic Star Clusters, IAU Symp 207, eds. E.K. Grebel, D. Geisler, D. Minniti. The isochrone data is in http://pleiadi.pd.astro.it/~lgirardi/isoc_photsys.htm