A new procedure for the photometric parallax estimation

Abstract

We present a new procedure for photometric parallax estimation. The data for 1236 stars provide calibrations between the absolute magnitude offset from the Hyades main-sequence and the ultraviolet-excess for eight different (B-V)0 colour-index intervals, (0.3 0.4), (0.4 0.5), (0.5 0.6), (0.6 0.7), (0.7 0.8), (0.8 0.9), (0.9 1.0) and (1.0 1.1). The mean difference between the original and estimated absolute magnitudes and the corresponding standard deviation are rather small, +0.0002 and ±0.0613 mag. The procedure has been adapted to the Sloan photometry by means of colour equations and applied to a set of artificial stars with different metallicities. The comparison of the absolute magnitudes estimated by the new procedure and the canonical one indicates that a single colour-magnitude diagram does not supply reliable absolute magnitudes for stars with large range of metallicity. © Astronomical Society of Australia 2003.