Thirteen‐Color Photometry of Open Cluster M48

Abstract

This paper presents 13 color CCD intermediate-band spectrophotometry of a field centered on the open cluster M48 (NGC 2548) from 400 to nearly 1000 nm, taken with Beijing-Arizona-Taiwan-Connecticut (BATC) Color Survey photometric system. The fundamental parameters of this cluster are derived with a new method that is based on a comparison of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of cluster stars and the theoretical SEDs of Padova models. We find that the best-fitting age of M48 is 0.32 Gyr, with a distance of 780 pc, a reddening of E(B -V) = 0.04, and a solar metallicity of Z = 0.019.