Related papers: A Precision Age Determination Technique for Globul…
The most accurate current methods for determining the ages of open star clusters, stellar associations and stellar streams are based on isochrone fitting or the lithium depletion boundary. We propose another method for dating these objects…
We present UBV color magnitude diagrams (CMDs) for the globular cluster M4. The CMDs show a sequence of four luminous blue stars (V<20, U-V<-0.6) which appear to be cluster hot subdwarfs. We present spectra for the three brightest ones. We…
Context: The formation and evolution of disk galaxies are long standing questions in Astronomy. Understanding the properties of globular cluster systems can lead to important insights on the evolution of its host galaxy. Aims: We aim to…
The age distribution of star clusters in nearby galaxies plays a crucial role in evaluating the lifetimes and disruption mechanisms of the clusters. Two very different results have been found recently for the age distribution chi(t) of…
Nine presently known "young" Galactic globular clusters, which have ages / 3 Gyr smaller than the oldest clusters of similar metallicity, all have RGC > 15 kpc. Furthermore these young globulars are found to have below-average luminosities.…
High-resolution Hubble Space Telescope (\textit{HST}) optical observations have been used to perform the deepest photometric study of the poorly studied Galactic globular cluster NGC 6284. The deep colour-magnitude diagram (CMD) that we…
Rotation periods are increasingly being used to derive ages for cool single field stars. Such ages are based on an empirical understanding of how cool stars spin down, acquired by constructing color-period diagrams (CPDs) for a series of…
We derive ages, metallicities and [alpha/Fe] ratios from the integrated spectra of 23 globular clusters in M31, by employing multivariate fits to two stellar population models. In parallel we analyze spectra of 21 Galactic globular clusters…
We present accurate integrated-light photometry in Johnson/Cousins V, R, and I for a sample of 28 globular clusters in the Magellanic Clouds. The majority of the clusters in our sample have reliable age and metallicity estimates available…
Stellar population models are commonly calculated using star clusters as calibrators for those evolutionary stages that depend on free parameters. However, discrepancies exist among different models, even if similar sets of calibration…
We present integrated photometry and color-magnitude diagrams for 161 star clusters in M33, of which 115 were previously uncataloged, using the Advanced Camera For Surveys Wide Field Channel onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. The…
We investigate in detail the white dwarf cooling sequence of the globular cluster Messier 4. In particular we study the influence of various systematic uncertainties, both observational and theoretical, on the determination of the cluster…
New age determinations of the galactic disk globular clusters 47 Tuc, M71 and NGC6352 have been performed with our up-to-date alpha-enhanced stellar models. We find that all three clusters are about 9.2 Gyr old and therefore coeval with the…
Grids of zero-age horizontal branch (ZAHB) models are presented, along with a suitable interpolation code, for -2.5 <= [Fe/H] <= -0.5, in steps of 0.2 dex, assuming Y = 0.25 and 0.29, [O/Fe] = +0.4 and +0.6, and [m/Fe] = 0.4 for all of the…
Age is a stellar parameter that is both fundamental and difficult to determine. Among middle-aged M dwarfs, the most prolific hosts of close-in and detectable exoplanets, gyrochronology is the most promising method to assign ages, but…
Theoretical relative ages of galactic globular clusters have recently been challenged by a semi-empirical relation. It was used to point out that tested sets of isochrones were unable to reproduce the relation and yield internally…
We determine ages of 71 old Open Clusters by a two-step method: we use main-squence fitting to 10 selected clusters, in order to obtain their distances, and derive their ages from comparison with our own isochrones used before for Globular…
Determining the sequence of events in the formation of stars and planetary systems and their time-scales is essential for understanding those processes, yet establishing ages is fundamentally difficult because we lack direct indicators. In…
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…
Globular clusters (GCs) are the oldest stellar systems in the Milky Way. Long time considered as simple stellar populations, nowadays we recognize their complex star formation history through precise abundance analysis of a variety of…