The Ages of Stars

By D. Soderblom. 2007

698 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The age of an individual star cannot be measured, only estimated through mostly model-dependent or empirical methods, and no single method works well for a broad range of stellar types or for a full range in age. This review presents a summary of the available techniques for age-dating stars and ensembles of stars, their realms of applicability, and their strengths and weaknesses. My emphasis is on low-mass stars because they are present from all epochs of star formation in the Galaxy and because they present both special opportunities and problems. The ages of open clusters are important for understanding the limitations of stellar models and for calibrating empirical age indicators. For individual stars, a hierarchy of quality for the available age-dating methods is described. Although our present ability to determine the ages of even the nearest stars is mediocre, the next few years hold great promise as asteroseismology probes beyond stellar surfaces and starts to provide precise interior properties o...

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Education, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2fddc2330ff58e85df107391a9635e71078305de

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Citations in the corpus

Calibrating gyrochronology using Kepler asteroseismic targets (2015, background): “Even with high precision spectroscopic measurements, ages often cannot be determined accurately to within 20% (Soderblom 2010).”
Accretion onto Pre-Main-Sequence Stars (2016, background): “Apart from other uncertainties (mainly getting the stellar mass right; see, e.g., Soderblom 2010, Soderblom et al. 2014), accurate ages for young stars depend upon choosing the correct initial radius at the end of infall from which to start the contraction calculations.”
Stellar magnetism: empirical trends with age and rotation (2014, methodology): “For young objects, the presence of lithium can constrain ages (Soderblom 2010b).”
The GALAH+ survey: Third data release (2020, background): “One of the most limiting bottlenecks of Galactic archaeology are the still significant uncertainties of stellar ages which can be estimated to no better than 10% (Soderblom 2010), but are typically significantly higher.”
A UNIFORM ASTEROSEISMIC ANALYSIS OF 22 SOLAR-TYPE STARS OBSERVED BY KEPLER (2012, result): “The systematic uncertainties on the radius are almost negligible, while the model-dependence of the asteroseismic age yields impressive accuracy compared to other age indicators for field stars (see Soderblom 2010).”
Scaled solar tracks and isochrones in a large region of the Z-Y plane. II. From 2.5 to 20 solar masses (2009, background): “This assumption is inaccurate for old globular clusters, some of which contain multiple stellar populations with evidence of significant helium enrichment (Piotto et al. 2007; Piotto 2009).”
DIRECT IMAGING OF A COLD JOVIAN EXOPLANET IN ORBIT AROUND THE SUN-LIKE STAR GJ 504 (2013, background): “However, it is generally not useful for stars near the zero-age main sequence (ZAMS), around which stellar evolution proceeds slowly (e.g., Soderblom 2010).”
The Milky Way’s stellar disk (2013, methodology): “The review by Soderblom (2010) provides an excellent exposition of these issues, and we only summarize a few salient points here.”
Standing on the Shoulders of Dwarfs: the Kepler Asteroseismic LEGACY Sample. II. Radii, Masses, and Ages (2016, background): “Stellar age determinations, by traditional means, can be very uncertain (see e.g., Soderblom 2010) and most age estimates, even when they ar X iv :1 61 1.”
Galactic archaeology: mapping and dating stellar populations with asteroseismology of red-giant stars (2012, methodology): “Ages can be estimated only for a limited sample of individual field stars, and then only by using either model-dependent ⋆ E-mail: miglioa@bison.ph.bham.ac.uk techniques or empirical methods that still need careful calibration (Soderblom 2010).”
Exploring the Milky Way stellar disk - A detailed elemental abundance study of 714 F and G dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood (2013, background): “However, age is a very difficult property to derive for most stars (e.g., Soderblom 2010).”