MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST). I: Solar-Scaled Models

TL;DR

The MIST project provides a comprehensive set of stellar evolutionary models and isochrones across a wide range of ages, masses, and metallicities, created using the open-source MESA code, to improve stellar population studies.

Contribution

This paper introduces the first release of MIST stellar models, covering extensive parameter space and including detailed comparisons with observations and existing models.

Findings

Models cover ages from 5 million to 2 billion years.

Includes stars from 0.1 to 300 solar masses.

Provides extensive validation against observational data.

Abstract

This is the first of a series of papers presenting the Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (MIST) project, a new comprehensive set of stellar evolutionary tracks and isochrones computed using MESA, a state-of-the-art open-source 1D stellar evolution package. In this work, we present models with solar-scaled abundance ratios covering a wide range of ages ($5 \leq \rm \log(Age)\;[yr] \leq 10.3$), masses ($0.1 \leq M/M_{\odot} \leq 300$), and metallicities ($-2.0 \leq \rm [Z/H] \leq 0.5$). The models are self-consistently and continuously evolved from the pre-main sequence to the end of hydrogen burning, the white dwarf cooling sequence, or the end of carbon burning, depending on the initial mass. We also provide a grid of models evolved from the pre-main sequence to the end of core helium burning for $-4.0 \leq \rm [Z/H] < -2.0$. We showcase extensive comparisons with observational constraints as well as with some of the most widely used existing models in the literature. The evolutionary tracks and isochrones can be downloaded from the project website at http://waps.cfa.harvard.edu/MIST/.