Thirteen‐Color Photometry of Open Cluster M48

This paper presents 13 color CCD intermediate‐band spectrophotometry of a field centered on the open cluster M48 (NGC 2548) from 400 to nearly 1000 nm, taken with Beijing‐Arizona‐Taiwan‐Connecticut (BATC) Color Survey photometric system. The fundamental parameters of this cluster are derived with a new method that is based on a comparison of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of cluster stars and the theoretical SEDs of Padova models. We find that the best‐fitting age of M48 is 0.32 Gyr, with a distance of 780 pc, a reddening of E(B - V) = 0.04, and a solar metallicity of Z = 0.019.