Photo-Met: A non-parametric method for estimating stellar metallicity from photometric observations

Abstract

Getting spectra at good signal-to-noise ratios takes orders of magnitudes more time than photometric observations. Building on the technique developed for photometric redshift estimation of galaxies, we develop and demonstrate a nonparametric photometric method for estimating the chemical composition of Galactic stars. We investigate the efficiency of our method using spectroscopically determined stellar metallicities from SDSS DR7. The technique is generic in the sense that it is not restricted to certain stellar types or stellar parameter ranges and makes it possible to obtain metallicities and error estimates for a much larger sample than spectroscopic surveys would allow. We find that our method performs well, especially for brighter stars and higher metallicities and, in contrast to many other techniques, we are able to reliably estimate the error of the predicted metallicities. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.