ИСТИНА

We adapt the classical Q-method based on a reddening-free parameter constructed from three passband magnitudes to the filter set of Isaac Newton Telescope Photometric Hα Survey and combine it with the maximum-likelihood-based cluster parameter estimator by Naylor & Jeffries (2006) to determine the extinction, heliocentric distances, and ages of young open clusters using Hαri data. The method is also adapted for the case of significant variations of extinction across the cluster field. Our technique is validated by comparing the colour excesses, distances, and ages determined in this study with the most bona fide values reported for the 18 well-studied young open clusters in the past and a fairly good agreement is found between our extinction and distance estimates and earlier published results, although our age estimates are not very consistent with those published by other authors. We also show that individual extinction values can be determined rather accurately for stars with (r − i) > 0.1. Our results open up a prospect for determining a uniform set of parameters for northern clusters based on homogeneous photometric data, and for searching for new, hitherto undiscovered open clusters.