Theoretical Isochrones with Extinction in the K-Band

Sungsoo S. Kim(1), Donald F. Figer(2), Myung Gyoon Lee(3), and Seungkyung Oh(1)


(1) Dept. of Astronomy & Space Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin-shi, Kyungki-do 449-701, Korea; sskim@ap.khu.ac.kr
(2) Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218; figer@stsci.edu
(3) Astronomy Program, SEES, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-742, Korea; mglee@astrog.snu.ac.kr

Paper: 2005 PASP, 117, 445


Abstract:

We calculate theoretical isochrones, in a consistent way, for five filters in the atmospheric window between 1.9 micron and 2.5 micron , K, K', Ks, F205W, and F222M, using the Padova stellar evolutionary models by Girardi et al. Even when displayed in the same Vega magnitude system, the near-infrared colors of the same isochrone can differ by up to 0.18 mag at its bright end, depending on the filter. We present magnitude transformations between K-band filters as a function of color from H & K band filters. Isochrones with extinction at K of up to 6 mag are also presented. We find that care is needed when comparing extinction values that are estimated using different filter sets in the K-band, in particular when comparing those between atmospheric and space filter sets: extinction values for space filters can be in error by up to 0.3 mag. To reduce this error, we introduce an ``effective extinction slope'' for each filter set and isochrone model, which describes the extinction behaviour of isochrones in the color-magnitude diagram more correctly than the actual extinction law. Our calculation also suggests that the extinction law implied by the observations of Rieke, Rieke, & Paul for wavelengths between H and K bands is better described by a power-law function with an exponent of 1.61, instead of 1.55, which is commonly used with an assumption that the transmission functions of H and K filters are Dirac delta functions.


Preprints available from the authors at sungsoo.kim@khu.ac.kr , or the raw TeX (no figures) if you click here.

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