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MIST

This submodule enables interaction with the bolometric correction (BC) grids released as part of the Mesa Isochrones & Stellar Tracks (MIST; Dotter (2016), Choi et al. (2016), Dotter et al. (2026), Bauer et al. (2026)) project. The MIST BC grids are convenient for stellar population work: they cover a wide range of photometric filters, span the full range of effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity relevant for stellar evolution, and are regular in their dependent variables, which greatly simplifies interpolation.

Two versions of the MIST BC tables are currently supported:

  • MIST v1.2 — the original grid with BCs tabulated as a function of temperature (Teff), surface gravity (logg), metallicity ([Fe/H]), and V-band extinction (Av).
  • MIST v2.5 — new grid adding [α/Fe] as a free parameter, updated solar chemical abundances, and additional photometric systems.

Common features

Both versions share:

  • The same set of photometric zeropoints stored in BolometricCorrections.MIST.zpt, an instance of BolometricCorrections.MIST.MISTZeropoints. This can be used to convert bolometric corrections between the AB, Vega, and ST photometric systems.
  • The same solar bolometric magnitude $M_{\odot,\text{bol}} = 4.74$ and bolometric luminosity $L_\odot = 3.828 \times 10^{33}$ erg s⁻¹.
  • A regular Cartesian grid in all dependent variables, enabling simple bilinear (or higher-order) interpolation.
  • The same call signature API: construct a grid object by loading a photometric system, then call it to obtain a table with the stellar-population parameters fixed.

Version comparison

Featurev1.2v2.5
Solar abundancesAsplund et al. (2009)Grevesse and Sauval (1998)
α-element enhancementfixed (scaled-solar)[α/Fe] ∈ {−0.2, 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6}
Teff gridlinear (2,500 – 1,000,000 K; 70 pts)log₁₀ (∼1,500 – 5,000,000 K; 41 pts)
[Fe/H] range−4.0 to +0.75 (18 values)−3.0 to +0.5 (15 values)
logg range−4.0 to 9.5 (26 values)−1.0 to 9.5 (22 values)
Photometric systems2228 (adds Euclid, NIRISS, RoboAO, Roman, HST/ACS-SBC)
Chemistry typeMISTv1ChemistryMISTv2Chemistry
Grid typeMISTv1BCGridMISTv2BCGrid
Table typeMISTv1BCTableMISTv2BCTable

Note that for ease of transition from with earlier versions of BolometricCorrections.jl that only supported MIST v1.2, the following deprecated aliases are available

Shared types

The zeropoint table and its type are shared between both versions:

BolometricCorrections.MIST.zpt — Constant

This constant is an instance of MISTZeropoints. See the docs for more informations on supported operations. This constant is returned when calling zeropoints on instances of MIST grids (MIST.MISTv1BCGrid, MIST.MISTv2BCGrid) and tables (MIST.MISTv1BCTable, MIST.MISTv2BCTable).

Each set of bolometric corrections is specified on either the Vega or AB magnitude system. For ease of conversion amongst the AB, ST, and Vega systems this table is provided containing one line for each filter in our collection. The contents of the file can be used to convert amongst AB, ST, and Vega magnitude systems as follows.

filtersystemmag(Vega/ST)mag(Vega/AB)
WISE_W1Vega6.6104972.665543

Above is the information for WISE W1, which is tabulated by default in Vega mags (as noted in column "system"). To convert WISE mags from Vega to AB is a simple operation: mag(AB) = mag(Vega) + "mag(Vega/AB)" [column 4 in the file]. For example, a star with WISE_W1(Vega) = 0.0 would have WISE_W1(AB) = 2.66.

To ease compatibility between Symbol and String representations, the mag(Vega/ST) and mag(Vega/AB) columns have been simplified to VegaST and VegaAB.

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BolometricCorrections.MIST.MISTZeropoints — Type

Struct to contain the MIST zeropoint information. A constant instance is available as BolometricCorrections.MIST.zpt. Instances are callable with a filtername::AbstractString which will return the zeropoint entry for the relevant filter. The full table can be retrieved with Table(zpt) and the list of available filters can be retrieved with filternames(zpt).

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MIST References

This page cites the following references: