scholarly journals Age and Metallicity Distributions among Galactic Disk Stars

1995 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 109-117
Author(s):  
P.E. Nissen

Observational studies of the relations between ages, metallicities and kinematics of disk stars in the solar neighbourhood are discussed with emphasis on the recent survey by Edvardsson et al. (1993), and galactic metallicity gradients inferred from these nearby stars are compared with gradients determined from distant B stars and open clusters.

1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 430-432
Author(s):  
Ted Von Hippel

The study of cluster white dwarfs (WDs) has been invigorated recently bythe Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Recent WD studies have been motivated by the new and independent cluster distance (Renzini et al. 1996), age (von Hippel et al. 1995; Richer et al. 1997), and stellar evolution (Koester & Reimers 1996) information that cluster WDs can provide. An important byproduct of these studies has been an estimate of the WD mass contribution in open and globular clusters. The cluster WD mass fraction is of importance for understanding the dynamical state and history of star clusters. It also bears an important connection to the WD mass fractions of the Galactic disk and halo. Current evidence indicates that the open clusters (e.g. von Hippel et al. 1996; Reid this volume) have essentially the same luminosity function (LF) as the solar neighborhood population. The case for the halo is less clear, despite the number of very good globular cluster LFs down to nearly 0.1 solar masses (e.g. Cool et al. 1996; Piotto, this volume), as the field halo LF is poorly known. For most clusters dynamical evolution should cause evaporation of the lowest mass members, biasing clusters to have flatter present-day mass functions (PDMFs) than the disk and halo field populations. Dynamical evolution should also allow cluster WDs to escape, though not in the same numbers as the much lower mass main sequence stars. The detailed connection between cluster PDMFs and the field IMF awaits elucidation from observations and the new combined N-body and stellar evolution models (Tout, this volume). Nevertheless, the WD mass fraction of clusters already provides an estimate for the WD mass fraction of the disk and halo field populations. A literature search to collect cluster WDs and a simple interpretive model follow. This is a work in progress and the full details of the literature search and the model will be published elsewhere.


2018 ◽  
Vol 618 ◽  
pp. A93 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Cantat-Gaudin ◽  
C. Jordi ◽  
A. Vallenari ◽  
A. Bragaglia ◽  
L. Balaguer-Núñez ◽  
...  

Context. Open clusters are convenient probes of the structure and history of the Galactic disk. They are also fundamental to stellar evolution studies. The second Gaia data release contains precise astrometry at the submilliarcsecond level and homogeneous photometry at the mmag level, that can be used to characterise a large number of clusters over the entire sky. Aims. In this study we aim to establish a list of members and derive mean parameters, in particular distances, for as many clusters as possible, making use of Gaia data alone. Methods. We compiled a list of thousands of known or putative clusters from the literature. We then applied an unsupervised membership assignment code, UPMASK, to the Gaia DR2 data contained within the fields of those clusters. Results. We obtained a list of members and cluster parameters for 1229 clusters. As expected, the youngest clusters are seen to be tightly distributed near the Galactic plane and to trace the spiral arms of the Milky Way, while older objects are more uniformly distributed, deviate further from the plane, and tend to be located at larger Galactocentric distances. Thanks to the quality of Gaia DR2 astrometry, the fully homogeneous parameters derived in this study are the most precise to date. Furthermore, we report on the serendipitous discovery of 60 new open clusters in the fields analysed during this study.


2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (S258) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Angela Bragaglia

AbstractThe Bologna Open Cluster Chemical Evolution (BOCCE) project is a photometric and spectroscopic survey of open clusters, to be used as tracers of the Galactic disk properties and evolution. The clusters parameters (age, distance, reddening, metallicity, and detailed abundances) are derived in a precise and homogeneous way. This will contribute to a solid, reliable description of the disk: the clusters parameters will be used, for instance, to determine the metallicity distribution in the Galactic disk and how it has evolved with time. We have concentrated on old open clusters and we have presently in our hands data for about 40 open clusters; we have fully analyzed the photometric data for about one half of them and the spectra for one quarter of them.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S266) ◽  
pp. 487-490
Author(s):  
D. B. Pavani ◽  
L. O. Kerber ◽  
E. Bica ◽  
W. J. Maciel

AbstractOpen cluster remnants (OCRs) are fundamental objects to investigate open cluster dissolution processes (e.g., Bica et al. 2001; Carraro 2002; Pavani et al. 2003; Carraro et al. 2007; Pavani & Bica 2007). They are defined as poorly populated concentrations of stars, with enough members to show evolutionary sequences in colour–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) as a result of the dynamical evolution of an initially more massive physical system. An OCR is intrinsically poorly populated, which makes its differentiation from field-star fluctuations difficult. Among the possible approaches to establish the nature of OCRs, we adopted CMD analysis combined with a robust statistical tool applied to 2mass data. In addition, photometry is the main information source available for possible OCRs (POCRs). We developed a statistical diagnostic tool to analyse the CMDs of POCRs and verify them as physical systems, explore membership probabilityies taking into account field contamination and derive age, distance and reddening values in a self-consistent way. We present the results of our analysis of 88 POCRs that are part of a larger sample that is widely distributed across the sky, with a significant density contrast of bright stars compared to the Galactic field. The 88 objects are projected onto low-density Galactic fields, at relatively high latitudes (|b| > 15°). Studies of larger POCR samples will provide a better understanding of OCR properties and constraints for theoretical models, including new insights into the evolution of open clusters and their dissolution rates. The results of this ongoing survey will provide a general picture of these fossil stellar systems and their connection to Galactic-disk evolution.


1993 ◽  
Vol 155 ◽  
pp. 581-581 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.A. Walton ◽  
M.J. Barlow ◽  
R.E.S. Clegg

We present abundance determinations, in particular of carbon, and C/O ratios, for 11 Galactic bulge planetary nebulae (PN) based on our low resolution UV data from IUE observations and optical spectrophotometry from the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We compare the observed abundances with those predicted by dredge-up theory for the high metallicity Galactic bulge. The sample abundances are also contrasted with the abundances found for PN in the Galactic disk. The mean C/O ratio for the bulge PN is significantly lower than that found for Galactic disk PN. Further, we present an abundance analysis of the very metal-poor bulge PN M2-29. From an analysis of the differential extinction found from the observed ratios of the He ii 1640,4686Å lines, we find that the ultraviolet reddening law towards the bulge is steeper than in the solar neighbourhood.


2011 ◽  
pp. 215-228
Author(s):  
Siegfried Röser ◽  
Nina V. Kharchenko ◽  
Anatoly E. Piskunov ◽  
Elena Schilbach ◽  
Ralf-Dieter Scholz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 635 ◽  
pp. A191
Author(s):  
A. Maliuk ◽  
J. Budaj

Context. Surveying the spatial distribution of exoplanets in the Galaxy is important for improving our understanding of planet formation and evolution. Aims. We aim to determine the spatial gradients of exoplanet occurrence in the Solar neighbourhood and in the vicinity of open clusters. Methods. We combined Kepler and Gaia DR2 data for this purpose, splitting the volume sampled by the Kepler mission into certain spatial bins. We determined an uncorrected and bias-corrected exoplanet frequency and metallicity for each bin. Results. There is a clear drop in the uncorrected exoplanet frequency with distance for F-type stars (mainly for smaller planets), a decline with increasing distance along the Galactic longitude l = 90°, and a drop with height above the Galactic plane. We find that the metallicity behaviour cannot be the reason for the drop of the exoplanet frequency around F stars with increasing distance. This might have only contributed to the drop in uncorrected exoplanet frequency with the height above the Galactic plane. We argue that the above-mentioned gradients of uncorrected exoplanet frequency are a manifestation of a single bias of undetected smaller planets around fainter stars. When we correct for observational biases, most of these gradients in exoplanet frequency become statistically insignificant. Only a slight decline of the planet occurrence with distance for F stars remains significant at the 3σ level. Apart from that, the spatial distribution of exoplanets in the Kepler field of view is compatible with a homogeneous one. At the same time, we do not find a significant change in the exoplanet frequency with increasing distance from open clusters. In terms of byproducts, we identified six exoplanet host star candidates that are members of open clusters. Four of them are in the NGC 6811 (KIC 9655005, KIC 9533489, Kepler-66, Kepler-67) and two belong to NGC 6866 (KIC 8396288, KIC 8331612). Two out of the six had already been known to be cluster members.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S266) ◽  
pp. 482-482
Author(s):  
Xiaoying Pang ◽  
Chenggang Shu

AbstractThe WEBDA database of open clusters (hereafter OCs) in the Galaxy contains 970 OCs, of which 911 have age determinations, 920 have distance measurements, and 911 have color-excess data. Base on the statistical analysis of global properties of open clusters, we investigate disk properties such as the height above the Galactic plane. We find that old open clusters (age ≥ 1 Gyr) are preferentially located far from the Galactic plane with 〈|z|〉~394.5 pc. They lie in the outer part of the Galactic disk. The young open clusters are distributed in the Galactic plane almost symmetrically with respect to the Sun, with a scale height perpendicular to the Galactic plane of 50.5 pc. The age distribution of open clusters can be fit approximately with a two-component exponential decay function: one component has an age scale factor of 225.2 Myr, and the other consists of longer-lived clusters with an age scale of 1.8 Gyr, which are smaller than those derived by Janes & Phelps (1994) of 200 Myr and 4 Gyr for the young and old OCs, respectively. As a consequence of completeness effects, the observed radial distribution of OCs with respect to Galactocentric distance does not follow the expected exponential profile. Instead, it falls off both for regions external to the solar circle and more sharply towards the Galactic Center, which is probably due to giant molecular cloud disruption in the center. We simulate the effects of completeness, assuming that the observed distribution of the number of OCs with a given number of stars above the background is representative of the intrinsic distribution of OCs throughout the Galaxy. Two simulation models are considered, in which the intrinsic number of the observable stars are distributed (i) assuming the actual positions of the OCs in the sample, and (ii) random selection of OC positions. As a result, we derive completeness-corrected radial distributions which agree with an exponential disk throughout the observed Galactocentric distance in the range of 5–15 kpc, with scale lengths in the range of 1.6–2.8 kpc.


1993 ◽  
Vol 153 ◽  
pp. 337-338
Author(s):  
N.A. Walton ◽  
M.J. Barlow ◽  
R.E.S. Clegg

An analysis of the differential ultraviolet extinction towards four bulge planetary nebulae, based on the observed line ratio of He II 1640/4686Å, shows that the ultraviolet reddening law towards the bulge is much steeper than in the solar neighbourhood. An analysis of the optical reddening law for 42 bulge PN, based upon observed Balmer line ratios and Hβ to radio free-free flux ratios, is presented. The optical reddening law towards the bulge is steeper than in the local ISM, and thus the ratio of total to selective extinction, Rv = 2.29 (± 0.50), is lower than the standard solar neighbourhood value of Rv = 3.10.We present abundance determinations, in particular C/H and C/O ratios, for 11 Galactic bulge PN, based on spectrophotometry in the UV from IUE and in the optical from the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The derived abundances are compared with values for PN in the Galactic disk. The mean C/O ratio for bulge PN is significantly lower than that found for Galactic disk PNs. Additionally we present an abundance analysis of the very metal-poor halo population PN M2-29, which is located in the bulge.


1996 ◽  
Vol 169 ◽  
pp. 431-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Fuchs ◽  
C. Dettbarn ◽  
R. Wielen

It is well known that the velocity dispersions of the stars in the solar neighbourhood increase with their ages (Wielen 1977). In Fig.1 we show |W| weighted velocity dispersions (cf. Wielen 1977) of the stars in the Third Catalog of Nearby Stars (Gliese and Jahreiß 1994). Open symbols indicate main sequence stars and crosses indicate McCormick stars, a kinematically unbiased subset of the CNS3, respectively, whereas the filled symbols are the Edvardsson et al. (1993) data. Stars older than 14 Gyr are not shown because they are probably thick disk stars (Freeman 1991). We have assumed a maximum age of the old thin disk stars of 12 Gyr as suggested by the Edvardsson et al. data. As can be seen from Fig.1 both data sets fit ideally together. The solid line indicates a σ ∝ τ1/2 law.


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