We have conducted a deep ( 15 \lesssim r \lesssim 23 ) , 20 night survey for transiting planets in the intermediate age open cluster M37 ( NGC 2099 ) using the Megacam wide-field mosaic CCD camera on the 6.5m Multiple Mirror Telescope ( MMT ) .
In this paper we describe the observations and data reduction procedures for the survey and analyze the stellar content and dynamical state of the cluster .
By combining high resolution spectroscopy with existing BVI _ { C } K _ { S } and new gri color magnitude diagrams we determine the fundamental cluster parameters : t = 485 \pm 28 Myr without overshooting ( t = 550 \pm 30 ~ { } { Myr } with overshooting ) , E ( B - V ) = 0.227 \pm 0.038 , ( m - M ) _ { V } = 11.57 \pm 0.13 and [ M / H ] = +0.045 \pm 0.044 which are in good agreement with , though more precise than , previous measurements .
We determine the mass function down to 0.3 M _ { \odot } and use this to estimate the total cluster mass of 3640 \pm 170 M _ { \odot } .