  The apparent age and mass of a stellar cluster can be strongly affected by
stochastic sampling of the stellar initial mass function, when inferred from
the integrated color of low mass clusters (less than ~10^4 solar masses). We
use simulated star clusters to show that these effects are minimized when the
brightest, rapidly evolving stars in a cluster can be resolved, and the light
of the fainter, more numerous unresolved stars can be analyzed separately. When
comparing the light from the less luminous cluster members to models of
unresolved light, more accurate age estimates can be obtained than when
analyzing the integrated light from the entire cluster under the assumption
that the initial mass function is fully populated. We show the success of this
technique first using simulated clusters, and then with a stellar cluster in
M31. This method represents one way of accounting for the discrete, stochastic
sampling of the stellar initial mass function in less massive clusters and can
be leveraged in studies of clusters throughout the Local Group and other nearby
galaxies.
