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Stellar ages and masses in the solar neighbourhood: Bayesian analysis using spectroscopy and Gaia DR1 parallaxes

Article

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Complete Citation

  • Lin, Jane, Dotter, Aaron, Ting, Yuan-Sen, and Asplund, Martin. 2018. "Stellar ages and masses in the solar neighbourhood: Bayesian analysis using spectroscopy and Gaia DR1 parallaxes." Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 477:2966-2975. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/sty709

Overview

Abstract

  • We present a Bayesian implementation of isochrone fitting in deriving stellar ages and masses, incorporating absolute K magnitude (M_K) derived from 2MASS photometry and Gaia DR1 parallax and differentiation between initial bulk metallicity and present-day surface metallicity, with allowance for incorporating further constraints (e.g. asteroseismology) when available. As a test, we re-computed stellar ages and masses of &tilde;4000 stars in the solar neighbourhood from six well-studied literature samples using both Hipparcos and TGAS parallaxes. Our ages are found to be compatible with literature values but with reduced uncertainties in general. The inclusion of parallax-based M_K serves as an additional constraint on the derived quantities, especially when systematic errors in stellar parameters are underestimated. We reconstructed the age-metallicity relationship in the solar neighbourhood by re-analysing the Geneva-Copenhagen Survey with the inclusion of TGAS-parallaxes and initial bulk metallicity sampling. We found a flat trend for disc stars with ages <11 Gyr but with smaller scatter at all ages compared to literature.

Publication Date

  • 2018

Authors