Related papers: Isochrone fitting in the Gaia era
We present a comparison of parallaxes and radii from asteroseismology and Gaia DR1 (TGAS) for 2200 Kepler stars spanning from the main sequence to the red giant branch. We show that previously identified offsets between TGAS parallaxes and…
Recent results have suggested that there is tension between the Gaia DR1 TGAS distances and the distances obtained using luminosities determined by eclipsing binaries or asteroseismology on red giant stars. We use the $K_s$-band…
The precision of cluster parameter determination has significantly improved with the availability of homogeneous photometric Gaia data, however, challenges such as age-metallicity degeneracy and lack of spectroscopic observations remain. In…
With contemporary infrared spectroscopic surveys like APOGEE, red-giant stars can be observed to distances and extinctions at which Gaia parallaxes are not highly informative. Yet the combination of effective temperature, surface gravity,…
Context. The precise determinations of stellar mass at $\sim$1% provide important constraints on stellar evolution models. Accurate parallax measurements can also serve as independent benchmarks for the next Gaia data release. Aims. We aim…
Pulsating stars, such as Cepheids, Miras, and RR Lyrae stars, are important distance indicators and calibrators of the "cosmic distance ladder", and yet their period-luminosity-metallicity (PLZ) relations are still constrained using simple…
Context. The first Gaia Data Release contains the Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS). This is a subset of about 2 million stars for which, besides the position and photometry, the proper motion and parallax are calculated using…
The accuracy of stellar distances inferred purely from parallaxes degrades rapidly with distance. Proper motion measurements, when combined with some idea of typical velocities, provide independent information on stellar distances. Here I…
For the vast majority of stars in the second Gaia data release, reliable distances cannot be obtained by inverting the parallax. A correct inference procedure must instead be used to account for the nonlinearity of the transformation and…
We present new isochrone fits to colour-magnitude diagrams of the Galactic globular cluster NGC 5904 (M5). We utilise 29 photometric bands from the ultraviolet to mid-infrared by use of the data from the {\it Hubble Space Telescope}, {\it…
UBC 1 is an open cluster discovered in Gaia data and located near the edge of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite's (TESS) continuous viewing zone. We aim to provide age constraints for this poorly studied open cluster from the…
The next generation of high-precision astrometry is rapidly approaching thanks to ongoing and upcoming missions like Euclid, LSST, and RST. We present a new tool (available at https://github.com/KevinMcK95/gaia_roman_astrometry) to simulate…
Understanding the formation and evolution of our Galaxy requires accurate distances, ages and chemistry for large populations of field stars. Here we present several updates to our spectro-photometric distance code, that can now also be…
The ages of star clusters and co-moving stellar groups contain essential information about the Milky Way. Their special properties make them excellent tracers of galactic structure and key components to unlocking its star formation history.…
Stellar distances constitute a foundational pillar of astrophysics. The publication of 1.47 billion stellar parallaxes from Gaia is a major contribution to this. Yet despite Gaia's precision, the majority of these stars are so distant or…
The Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution (TGAS) subset of the first Gaia catalogue contains an unprecedented sample of proper motions and parallaxes for two million stars brighter than G~12 mag. We take advantage of the full astrometric solution…
The unrivalled astrometric and photometric capabilities of the Gaia mission have given new impetus to the study of young stars: both from an environmental perspective, as members of comoving star-forming regions, and from an individual…
A new method is presented to compute age estimates from theoretical isochrones using temperature, luminosity and metallicity data for individual stars. Based on Bayesian probability theory, this method avoids the systematic biases affecting…
Reliable stellar age estimates are fundamental for testing several problems in modern astrophysics, in particular since they set the time scales of Galactic dynamical and chemical evolution. In this study, we determine ages using only Gaia…
Context. The Gaia satellite will measure highly accurate absolute parallaxes of hundreds of millions of stars by comparing the parallactic displacements in the two fields of view of the optical instrument. The requirements on the stability…