Introducing MADYS: the Manifold Age Determination for Young Stars

Abstract

Context. The unrivalled astrometric and photometric capabilities of the Gaia mission have given new impetus to the study of young stars: both from an environmental perspective, as members of comoving star-forming regions, and from an individual perspective, as targets amenable to planet-hunting direct-imaging observations. Aims. In view of the large availability of theoretical evolutionary models, both fields would benefit from a unified framework that allows a straightforward comparison of physical parameters obtained by different stellar and substellar models. Methods. To this aim, we developed madys, a flexible Python tool for age and mass determination of young stellar and substellar objects. In this first release, madys automatically retrieves and cross-matches photometry from several catalogs, estimates interstellar extinction, and derives age and mass estimates for individual objects through isochronal fitting.Results. Harmonizing the heterogeneity of publicly-available isochrone grids, the tool allows to choose amongst 16 models, many of which with customizable astrophysical parameters, for a total of ∼ 110 isochrone grids. Several dedicated plotting function are provided to allow an intuitive visual perception of the numerical output. Conclusions. After extensive testing, we have made the tool publicly available (https://github.com/vsquicciarini/madys). We demonstrate here the capabilities of madys, summarising already published results as well providing several new examples.