Age Dating Stellar Populations in the Near Infrared: An absolute age indicator from the presence/absence of red supergiants

Abstract

The determination of age is a critical component in the study of a population of stellar clusters. In this letter we present a new absolute age indicator for young massive star clusters based on J-H colour. This novel method identifies clusters as older or younger than 5.7 +/- 0.8 Myr based on the appearance of the first population of red supergiant stars. We test the technique on the stellar cluster population of the nearby spiral galaxy, M83, finding good agreement with the theoretical predictions. The localisation of this technique to the near-IR promises that it may be used well into the future with space-- and ground--based missions optimised for near-IR observations.

5 pages, 5 figures. Accepted to MNRAS, November 2012

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• Constraining Globular Cluster Formation Through Studies of Young Massive Clusters - IV. Testing the Fast Rotating Massive Star Scenario
• Red Supergiants as Cosmic Abundance Probes: massive star clusters in M83, and the mass-metallicity relation of nearby galaxies
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• Quantitative Spectroscopic J-band Study of Red Supergiants in Perseus OB-1
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• Chemistry and Kinematics of Red Supergiant Stars in the Young Massive Cluster NGC 2100
• Physical properties of the first spectroscopically confirmed red supergiant stars in the Sculptor Group galaxy NGC 55
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