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

Understand

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 $-4.0 \leq \rm [Z/H] < -2.0$.