Related papers: A Splinter Session on the Thorny Problem of Stella…
A knowledge of stellar ages is crucial for our understanding of many astrophysical phenomena, and yet ages can be difficult to determine. As they become older, stars lose mass and angular momentum, resulting in an observed slowdown in…
The study of open clusters has a classic feel to it since the subject predates anyone alive today. Despite the age of this topic, I show via an ADS search that its relevance and importance in astronomy has grown faster in the last few…
We provide a status report on the determination of stellar ages from asteroseismology for stars of various masses and evolutionary stages. The ability to deduce the ages of stars with a relative precision of typically 10 to 20% is a unique…
Age is one of the most fundamental parameters of stars, yet it is one of the hardest to determine as it requires modelling various aspects of stellar formation and evolution. When we compare the ages derived from isochronal and dynamical…
Magnetic fields are regarded as a crucial element for our understanding of stellar physics. They can be studied with a variety of methods which provide complementary - and sometimes contradictory - information about the structure, strength…
I explore the current ability of both white dwarf cooling theory and main sequence stellar evolution theory to accurately determine stellar population ages by comparing ages derived using both techniques for open clusters ranging from 0.1…
The understanding and modeling of the structure and evolution of stars is based on statistical physics as well as on hydrodynamics. Today, a precise identification and proper description of the physical processes at work in stellar…
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…
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…
In this last decade, our knowledge of evolutionary and structural properties of stars of different mass and chemical composition is significantly improved. This result has been achieved as a consequence of our improved capability in…
Setting the timeline of the events which shaped the Milky Way disc through its 13 billion year old history is one of the major challenges in the theory of galaxy formation. Achieving this goal is possible using late-type stars, which in…
(ABRIDGED) We assess the systematic uncertainties in (young) cluster age, mass, and - to a lesser extent - extinction and metallicity determinations, based on broad-band imaging observations with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our aim here is…
Stellar models provide a vital basis for many aspects of astronomy and astrophysics. Recent advances in observational astronomy -- through asteroseismology, precision photometry, high-resolution spectroscopy, and large-scale surveys -- are…
A deep understanding of the Milky Way galaxy, its formation and evolution requires observations of huge numbers of stars. Stellar photometry, therefore, provides an economical method to obtain intrinsic stellar parameters. With the addition…
We present new evolutionary stellar models suitable for old Population I clusters, discussing both the consequences of the most recent improvements in the input physics and the effect of element diffusion within the stellar structures.…
The study of stellar populations is a discipline that is highly dependent on both imaging and spectroscopy. I discuss techniques in different regimes of resolving power: broadband imaging (R~4), intermediate band imaging (R~16, 64),…
Detailed modelling of stellar oscillations is able to give precise estimates for stellar ages, but the inferred results typically depend on the adopted model parameters used for the age inference. High-quality asteroseismic data with…
Although the Sun is our closest star by many orders of magnitude and despite having sunspot records stretching back to ancient China, our knowledge of the Sun's magnetic field is far from complete. Indeed, even now, after decades of study,…
The determination of stellar populations of galaxies are important for studying the formation and evolution of galaxies, because all galaxies contain many stars and they evolve with galaxies. Spectra data are usually used to determine the…
Substellar multiplicity is a key outcome of the formation process. The biggest challenge for the next decade will be to distinguish between the formation history, environmental conditions, and dynamical evolution leading to the least…