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MODEST Working Group 5:
Simulating Observations of Simulations of Open Clusters

While analyzing the results of our simulations, we have been struck by the large number of uncertainties in how best to handle the data. After making the usual theoretical pictures of our model clusters, we are often left with the uneasy feeling that real observers might well have completely different ways of handling the data, and would likely disagree with us on how best to present it. In a sense, it is almost a drawback to know too much about the simulated system -- we can't see the cluster for the stars. For example, even determining which stars an observer might select as cluster members, or how the observer would go about measuring the overall binary fraction, require us to throw away dynamical data in a manner that depends strongly on the specific observational techniques used. How then do we achieve our goal of presenting model data in a form that is both comprehensible and useful to observers?
The obvious solution to this conundrum is to seek advice from the experts. Incorporating the observer's view of our simulations is valuable for three main reasons:

Comparisons between model data and the way an observer would study a real cluster provide a critical check on the observer's data reduction process.

In addition, there are many uncertainties as to how our models would appear if they were observed as a real cluster on the sky. Numerical problems, erroneous initial conditions, and other incorrect assumptions may reveal themselves much more clearly when the models are analyzed by observers rather than by theorists.

Since theoretical models are at last producing sufficiently detailed data that we can now talk meaningfully about performing comparisons between theory and observations, it is critical that we identify robust ways of projecting numerical data onto the observational plane. Model builders have talked about this for many years (decades, in fact), but little has come of it.


Two images in B (left) and V (right) filters of a simulated Hyades-like star cluster. The CCD images are 'taken' with a 1.5 meter telescope on a 512x512 CCD.
	The left image is a color magnitude diagram constructed from the above presented CCD images of the simulated Hyades star cluster. The data analysis was performed by Ata Sarajedini

More information about the Open Cluster SOS project can be found here

Fold your own star clusters with the two cut-out star cluster cubes


Pleiades dice	Hyades dice

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MODEST Working Group 5: Simulating Observations of Simulations of Open Clusters

MODEST Working Group 5:
Simulating Observations of Simulations of Open Clusters