Automatic observation rendering (AMORE)^*

I. On a synthetic stellar population's colour-magnitude diagram

¹ TNO TPD Space, PO Box 155, 2600 AD  Delft, The Netherlands
² Padova Astronomical Observatory, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padua, Italy
³ Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
⁴ Padova Department of Astronomy, Vicolo dell'Osservatorio 2, 35122 Padua, Italy
⁵ National Council of Research, IAS, Rome Italy

Corresponding author: Y. K. Ng, ykng@tpd.tno.nl

Received: 14 February 2002
Accepted: 15 May 2002

Abstract

A new method, AMORE – based on a genetic algorithm optimizer, is presented for the automated study of colour-magnitude diagrams. The method combines several stellar population synthesis tools developed in the last decade by or in collaboration with the Padova group. Our method is able to recover, within the uncertainties, the parameters – distance, extinction, age, metallicity, index of a power-law initial mass function and the index of an exponential star formation rate – from a reference synthetic stellar population. No a priori information is inserted to recover the parameters, which is done simultaneously and not one at a time. Examples are given to demonstrate and to better understand biases in the results, if one of the input parameters is deliberately set fixed to a non-optimum value.