26–29 May 2026
Radisson Blu Marina Palace Hotel
Europe/Helsinki timezone

Twinkle twinkle little star, can I know how old you are?

27 May 2026, 15:00
15m
Room A

Room A

Speaker

Emelie Sandved (Uppsala University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Division of Astronomy and Space Physics)

Description

Knowing ages of stars is essential for many fields in astronomy where we want to study the evolution of different astronomical systems. Examples of such fields are planet system evolution, planetary evolution, and galactic archaeology. However, estimating the age of a star is not as straightforward as one might think. In fact, stars undergo very few evolutionary stages where their observed properties uniquely reflect their age. For subgiant field stars, stellar ages can be estimated with a probabilistic comparison between stellar properties and evolution models. I am testing a code that utilises this method on Gaia data from well-studied samples of stars such as star clusters to characterise the range of stellar age, metallicity and evolutionary stage for which we derive precise ages. In the future, we plan to use this code to understand the ages of accreted Milky Way halo populations using new data from the upcoming 4MOST survey.

Presentation materials

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