Related papers: Identifying Uncertainties in Stellar Evolution Mod…
Context. Stellar ages are typically very difficult to estimate for field stars. New empirical methods, based on abundance ratios of chemical elements, are emerging and need to be calibrated. Aims. Our main aim is to contribute to revealing…
Although asteroseismology is regarded as the most powerful tool for probing stellar interiors, seismic modelling remains dependent on global stellar parameters. Stellar clusters offer direct measurements of these parameters by fitting a…
Estimating ages for stars is difficult at best, but Galactic problems have their own requirements that go beyond those for other areas of astrophysics. As in other areas, asteroseismology is helping, and in this review I discuss some of the…
We present the first results of a new technique to detect, locate, and characterize young dissolving star clusters. Using HST/ACS archival images of the nearby galaxy IC2574, we performed stellar PSF photometry and selected the most massive…
We present CMDs in the V and I bands for fifteen star clusters in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) based on data taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT, Chile). We selected these clusters from our previous work, wherein we derived cluster…
We address the question how accurately stellar ages can be determined by stellar evolution theory. We select the star with the best observational material available - our Sun. We determine the solar age by fitting solar evolution models to…
Determining the properties of old stellar populations (those with age >1 Gyr) has long involved the comparison of their integrated light, either in the form of photometry or spectroscopic indexes, with empirical or synthetic templates. Here…
We present a new absolute age determination for NGC 6791, one of the Milky Way's oldest and most metal-rich open clusters. Its unusual properties make it an important probe of inner-disk evolution and asteroseismic calibration, but its age…
Massive clusters in our Galaxy are an ideal testbed to investigate the properties and evolution of high mass stars. They provide statistically significant samples of massive stars of uniform ages. To accurately determine the intrinsic…
Observations of Young Star Cluster ({\bf YSC}) systems in interacting galaxies are reviewed with particular emphasis on their Luminosity Functions ({\bf LF}) and colour distributions. A few spectroscopic abundance measurements are…
Binary systems, in particular eclipsing binaries, are essential sources of our knowledge of the fundamental properties of stars. The ages of binaries, members of open clusters, are constrained by their own fundamental properties and by…
We here develop an improved way of using a rotating star as a clock, set it using the Sun, and demonstrate that it keeps time well. This technique, called gyrochronology, permits the derivation of ages for solar- and late-type main sequence…
The formation of the extended thin disc is the most spectacular event of our Galaxy in the past $\sim8$\,Gyr. To unveil this process, obtaining precise and accurate stellar ages for a large sample of stars is essential although challenging.…
Globular clusters (GCs) provide statistically significant coeval populations of stars spanning various evolutionary stages, allowing robust constraints on stellar evolution model parameters and ages. We analyze eight old Milky Way GCs with…
We are using full spectrum fitting to determine the ages and metallicities of Galactic clusters (M67 and globular clusters). We find that the method is very accurate to measure the metallicity. Blue horizontal branches are well identified…
The mean ages of early-type galaxies obtained from the analysis of optical spectra, give a mean age of 8 Gyr at z = 0, with 40% being younger than 6 Gyr. Independent age determinations are possible by using infrared spectra (5-21 microns),…
We fit the colour-magnitude diagrams of stars between the zero-age main-sequence and terminal-age main sequence in young clusters and associations. The ages we derive are a factor 1.5 to 2 longer than the commonly used ages for these…
Recently, a noticeable number of new star clusters was identified in the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) populating the so-called star cluster age gap, a space of time (~ 4-12 Gyr) where the only known star cluster is…
Galactic archaeology largely relies on precise ages of distant evolved stars in the Milky Way. Nowadays, asteroseismology can deliver ages for many red giants observed with high-cadence, high-precision photometric space missions. Our aim is…
We present a novel statistical algorithm, Stellar Ages, which currently infers the age, metallicity, and extinction posterior distributions of stellar populations from their magnitudes. While this paper focuses on these parameters, the…