This project involves the analysis of star clusters within the NGC 1300 galaxy, using photometric data and theoretical evolutionary tracks to classify clusters by age and symmetry. The analysis also includes overlaying young, middle-aged, and old-aged clusters over CO moment maps from ALMA to study their distribution within the galaxy.
This project was conducted as part of Krittika Summer Projects (KSP) 5.0 by Krittika: The Astronomy Club of IIT Bombay.
You can read the full report here.
- Introduction
- Usage
- Data Sources
- Results
- Contributor
This project aims to understand the properties and distributions of star clusters in the NGC 1300 galaxy. The analysis focuses on classifying star clusters into different age groups based on photometric data and examining their spatial distribution using CO moment maps.
This repository helps users gain basic knowledge about key astrophysical data analysis techniques such as:
- Aperture Photometry
- Color-Magnitude Diagrams (CMDs)
- Star Cluster Age Estimation
To replicate the analysis:
- Download the relevant data from the sources listed below.
- Modify the data paths in the Jupyter Notebook (
.ipynb) accordingly. - The code is generalizable to other galaxies, so specific data files are not uploaded.
Data for this project was sourced from publicly available astronomical surveys:
- PHANGS-HST — High-resolution Hubble imaging
- PHANGS-ALMA — CO Moment Maps from ALMA
- Theoretical tracks used in CMD analysis are included in
data.zip.
The analysis of star clusters in NGC 1300 revealed:
- Young clusters (1–100 Myr) are concentrated along the spiral arms.
- Middle-aged clusters are found between the spiral arms and the galactic bulge.
- Old clusters are heavily concentrated at the center of the galaxy.
These spatial distributions offer insight into the star formation history and structural evolution of the galaxy.
B M Manohara
GitHub: @Manohara-Ai