We present a global study of low mass, young stellar object (YSO) surface densities (Sigma) in nearby (< 500 pc) star forming regions based on a comprehensive collection of Spitzer Space Telescope surveys. We show that the distribution of YSO surface densities is a smooth distribution, being adequately described by a lognormal function from a few to 10^3 YSOs per pc^2, with a peak at ~22 stars pc^-2. The observed lognormal Sigma is consistent with predictions of hierarchically structured star-formation at scales below 10 pc, arising from the molecular cloud structures. We do not find evidence for multiple discrete modes of star-formation (e.g. clustered and distributed). Comparing the observed Sigma distribution to previous Sigma threshold definitions of clusters show that they are arbitrary. We find that only a low fraction (< 26$) of stars are formed in dense environments where their formation/evolution (along with their circumstellar disks and/or planets) may be affected by the close proximity of their low-mass neighbours.
We investigate the frequency of high carbon-to-oxygen (C/O $= 0.9$) M dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood. Using synthetic spectra, we find that such M dwarfs would have weaker TiO bands relative to hydride features. Similar weakening has already been detected in M-subdwarf (sdM) stars. By comparing to existing spectroscopic surveys of nearby stars, we show that less than one percent of nearby stars have high carbon-to-oxygen ratios. This limit does not include stars with C/O$=0.9$, [m/H]$>0.3$, and [C/Fe]$>0.1$, which we predict to have low-resolution optical spectra similar to solar metal…
Debris discs - analogous to the Asteroid and Kuiper-Edgeworth belts in the Solar system - have so far mostly been identified and studied in thermal emission shortward of 100 um. The Herschel space observatory and the SCUBA-2 camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope will allow efficient photometric surveying at 70 to 850 um, which allow for the detection of cooler discs not yet discovered, and the measurement of disc masses and temperatures when combined with shorter wavelength photometry. The SCUBA-2 Unbiased Nearby Stars (SUNS) survey and the DEBRIS Herschel Open Time Key Project are compl…
With the much enlarged stellar sample of 55831 stars and much increased precision in distances, proper motions, provided by Gaia DR1 TGAS we have shown with the help of the wavelet analysis that the velocity distribution of stars in the Solar neighbourhood contains more kinematic structures than previously known. We detect 19 kinematic structures between scales 3-16 km/s at the 3sigma confidence level. Among them we identified well-known groups (such as Hercules, Sirius, Coma Berenices, Pleiades, and Wolf 630). We confirmed recently detected groups (such as Antoja12 and Bobylev16). In addition…
Using 17 chemical elements as a proxy for stellar DNA, we present a full phylogenetic study of stars in the solar neighbourhood. This entails applying a clustering technique that is widely used in molecular biology to construct an evolutionary tree from which three branches emerge. These are interpreted as stellar populations which separate in age and kinematics and can be thus attributed to the thin disk, the thick disk, and an intermediate population of probable distinct origin. We further find six lone stars of intermediate age that could not be assigned to any population with enough statis…
We present a Bayesian implementation of isochrone fitting in deriving stellar ages and masses, incorporating absolute K magnitude ($\rm M_K$) 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 $\sim 4000$ 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 …
We present a global study of low mass, young stellar object (YSO) surface densities in nearby (< 500 pc) star forming regions based on a comprehensive collection of Spitzer Space Telescope surveys. We show that the distribution of YSO surface densities in the solar neighbourhood is a smooth distribution, being adequately described by a lognormal function from a few to 10^3 YSOs per pc^2, with a peak at 22 stars/pc^2 and a dispersion of 0.85. We do not find evidence for multiple discrete modes of star-formation (e.g. clustered and distributed). Comparing the observed surface density distributio…
We cross-match the Alma catalog of OB stars with Gaia DR2 astrometry and photometry as a first step towards producing a clean sample of massive stars in the solar neighbourhood with a high degree of completeness. We analyze the resulting colour-absolute magnitude diagram to divide our sample into categories and compare extinction estimates from two sources, finding problems with both of them. The distances obtained with three different priors are found to have few differences among them, indicating that Gaia DR2 distances are robust. An analysis of the 3-D distribution of massive stars in the …
We have, for the first time, compiled a nearly complete census of planetary nebulae (PNe) centred on the Sun. Our goal is the generation of an unbiased volume-limited sample, in order to answer some long-standing statistical questions regarding the overall population of Galactic disk PNe and their central stars. Much improved discrimination of classical PNe from their mimics is now possible based on the wide variety of high-quality multiwavelength data sets that are now available. However, we note that evidence is increasing that PNe are heterogeneous, and probably derived from multiple evolut…
The Galactic orbital parameters of 159 cataclysmic variables in the Solar neighbourhood are calculated, for the first time, to determine their population types using published kinematical parameters. Population analysis shows that about 6 per cent of cataclysmic variables in the sample are members of the thick disc component of the Galaxy. This value is consistent with the fraction obtained from star count analysis. The rest of the systems in the sample are found to be in the thin disc component of the Galaxy. Our analysis revealed no halo CVs in the Solar vicinity. About 60 per cent of the th…
The majority of Milky Way extrasolar planets likely reside within a few kpc of the Galactic centre. The Galactic tidal forces acting on planets scale inversely with radius in the Galaxy and so are much greater in the inner Galaxy than in the Solar neighbourhood. Within a range of 3.5 to 10 kpc, the vertical tide from the Galactic disc is predominant. Interior to 3.5 kpc, the effects of the Galactic bulge cannot be neglected and the in-plane tidal components are as important as the vertical ones. Here, we quantify the orbital changes induced by these tides. We find that the greatest perturbatio…
I use a sample of more than 120,000 stars in the solar neighbourhood with parallaxes, magnitudes and colours estimated with unprecedented accuracy by the second data release of the Gaia mission to derive the initial mass function of the Galactic disc. A full-forward technique is used to take into account for the population of unresolved binaries, the metallicity distribution, the star formation history and their variation across the Galactic disk as well as all the observational effects. The shape of the initial mass function is well represented by a segmented power-law with two breaks at char…
The termination in the white dwarf luminosity function is a standard diagnostic tool for measuring the total age of nearby stellar populations. In this paper, an algorithm is presented for inverting the full white dwarf luminosity function to obtain a maximum likelihood estimate of the time varying star formation rate of the host stellar population. Tests with synthetic data demonstrate that the algorithm converges over a wide class of underlying star formation rate forms. The algorithm successfully estimates the moving average star formation rate as a function of lookback time in the presence…
We present a self-consistent, absolute isochronal age scale for young (< 200 Myr), nearby (< 100 pc) moving groups, which is consistent with recent lithium depletion boundary ages for both the Beta Pic and Tucana-Horologium moving groups. This age scale was derived using a set of semi-empirical pre-main-sequence model isochrones that incorporate an empirical colour-Teff relation and bolometric corrections based on the observed colours of Pleiades members, with theoretical corrections for the dependence on log g. Absolute ages for young, nearby groups are vital as these regions play a crucial r…
We analyse the results of a 5.5-yr photometric campaign that monitored 247 southern, semi-regular variables with relatively precise Hipparcos parallaxes to demonstrate an unambiguous detection of Red Giant Branch (RGB) pulsations in the solar neighbourhood. We show that Sequence A' contains a mixture of AGB and RGB stars, as indicated by a temperature related shift at the TRGB. Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and Galactic sequences are compared in several ways to show that the P-L sequence zero-points have a negligible metallicity dependence. We describe a new method to determine absolute magnitu…
The Virtual Observatory is useful. I summarise some of my works where I extensively use the Aladin sky atlas. Topics cover from the search and common proper motion confirmation of very low-mass stars and brown dwarfs in wide (rho > 1000 AU) binaries and multiple systems, to the identification and characterisation of stellar and substellar populations in young open clusters and OB associations at heliocentric distances of up to 1000 pc. I present three practical examples of what one can do with Aladin in one morning: a fruitful proper-motion search of objects with available ugrizJHKs photometry…
The age-metallicity relation is a fundamental tool for constraining the chemical evolution of the Galactic disc. In this work we analyse the observational properties of this relation using binary stars that have not interacted consisting of a white dwarf - from which we can derive the total age of the system - and a main sequence star - from which we can derive the metallicity as traced by the [Fe/H] abundances. Our sample consists of 46 widely separated, but unresolved spectroscopic binaries identified within the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and 189 white dwarf plus main sequence common proper m…
We present a kinematical study of 314 RR~Lyrae stars in the solar neighbourhood using the publicly available photometric, spectroscopic, and {\it Gaia} DR2 astrometric data to explore their distribution in the Milky Way. We report an overdensity of 22 RR~Lyrae stars in the solar neighbourhood at a pericenter distance of between 5--9\,kpc from the Galactic center. Their orbital parameters and their chemistry indicate that these 22 variables share the kinematics and the [Fe/H] values of the Galactic disc, with an average metallicity and tangential velocity of [Fe/H]=$-0.60$\,dex and $v_θ = 241$\…
Debris discs are a consequence of the planet formation process and constitute the fingerprints of planetesimal systems. Their solar system's counterparts are the asteroid and Edgeworth-Kuiper belts. The aim of this paper is to provide robust numbers for the incidence of debris discs around FGK stars in the solar neighbourhood. The full sample of 177 FGK stars with d<20 pc proposed for the DUNES survey is presented. Herschel/PACS observations at 100 and 160 micron complemented with data at 70 micron, and at 250, 350 and 500 micron SPIRE photometry, were obtained. The 123 objects observed by the…
Stellar encounters in the solar neighbourhood and the special case of GJ~710
Institut de Ciències de l’Espai (ICE, CSIC)（太空科学研究所）；Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya (IEEC)（加泰罗尼亚空间研究研究所）；Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge（剑桥大学天文学研究所）；Dept. Ingeniería Energética, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)（国家远程教育大学能源工程系）
The age-metallicity relation (AMR) is a fundamental observational constraint for understanding how the Galactic disc formed and evolved chemically in time. However, there is not yet an agreement on the observational properties of the AMR for the solar neighbourhood, primarily due to the difficulty in obtaining accurate stellar ages for individual field stars. We have started an observational campaign for providing the much needed observational input by using wide white dwarf-main sequence (WDMS) binaries. White dwarfs are natural clocks and can be used to derive accurate ages. Metallicities ca…
We report the abundances of C, Na, Mg, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, Sr, Y, Zr, Ba, Ce, Nd, and Sm in 25 solar-type stars in the solar neighbourhood, and their correlations with ages, kinematics, and orbital parameters. The spectroscopic analysis, based high resolution and high S/N ratio data, was differential to the Sun and applied to atomic line EWs and to C and C2 spectral synthesis. We performed a statistical study using a tree clustering analysis, searching for groups of stars sharing similar abundance patterns. We derived Teff, log(g), and [Fe/H] with errors of 30 K, 0.1…
Setting the timeline of the events which shaped the Milky Way disc through its 13 billion year old history is one of the major challenges in the theory of galaxy formation. Achieving this goal is possible using late-type stars, which in virtue of their long lifetimes can be regarded as fossil remnants from various epochs of the formation of the Galaxy. There are two main paths to reliably age-date late-type stars: astrometric distances for stars in the turn-off and subgiant region, or oscillation frequencies along the red giant branch. So far, these methods have been applied to large samples o…
We present a re-analysis of the Geneva-Copenhagen survey, which benefits from the infrared flux method to improve the accuracy of the derived stellar effective temperatures and uses the latter to build a consistent and improved metallicity scale. Metallicities are calibrated on high-resolution spectroscopy and checked against four open clusters and a moving group, showing excellent consistency. The new temperature and metallicity scales provide a better match to theoretical isochrones, which are used for a Bayesian analysis of stellar ages. With respect to previous analyses, our stars are on a…
In the last three decades several hundred nearby members of young stellar moving groups (MGs) have been identified, but there has been less systematic effort to quantify or characterise young stars that do not belong to previously identified MGs. Using a kinematically unbiased sample of 225 lithium-rich stars within 100 pc, we find that only $50 \pm 10$ per cent of young ($\lesssim 125$ Myr), low-mass ($0.5<M/M_{\odot}<1.0$) stars, are kinematically associated with known MGs. Whilst we find some evidence that six of the non-MG stars may be connected with the Lower Centaurus-Crux association, t…
The following parameters are determined for 63 Galactic supergiants in the solar neighbourhood: effective temperature Teff, surface gravity log g, iron abundance log e(Fe), microturbulent parameter Vt, mass M/Msun, age t and distance d. A significant improvement in the accuracy of the determination of log g and, all parameters dependent on it, is obtained through application of van Leeuwens (2007) re-reduction of the Hipparcos parallaxes. The typical error in the log g values is now +-0.06 dex for supergiants with distances d < 300 pc and +-0.12 dex for supergiants with d between 300 and 700 p…
Galactic Archeology is a powerful tool for investigating the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. We use this technique to study kinematic groups of F- and G-stars in the solar neighbourhood. From correlations between orbital parameters, three new coherent groups of stars were recently identified and suggested to correspond to remnants of disrupted satellites. We determine detailed elemental abundances in stars belonging to one of these groups and compare their chemical composition with Galactic disc stars. The aim is to look for possible chemical signatures that might give information ab…
A sample of mostly old metal-rich dwarf and turn-off stars with high eccentricity and low maximum height above the Galactic plane has been identified. From their kinematics, it was suggested that the inner disk is their most probable birthplace. Their chemical imprints may therefore reveal important information about the formation and evolution of the still poorly understood inner disk. To probe the formation history of these stellar populations, a detailed analysis of a sample of very metal-rich stars is carried out. We derive the metallicities, abundances of α elements, ages, and Galactic or…
A period of quenching between the formation of the thick and thin disks of the Milky Way has been recently proposed to explain the observed age-[α/Fe] distribution of stars in the solar neighbourhood. However, robust constraints on stellar ages are currently available for only a limited number of stars. The all-sky survey TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) will observe the brightest stars in the sky and thus can be used to investigate the age distributions of stars in these components of the Galaxy via asteroseismology, where previously this has been difficult using other techniques.…
We test whether or not the orbital poles of the systems in the solar neighbourhood are isotropically distributed on the celestial sphere. The problem is plagued by the ambiguity on the position of the ascending node. Of the 95 systems closer than 18 pc from the Sun with an orbit in the 6th Catalogue of Orbits of Visual Binaries, the pole ambiguity could be resolved for 51 systems using radial velocity collected in the literature and CORAVEL database or acquired with the HERMES-Mercator spectrograph. For several systems, we can correct the erroneous nodes in the 6th Catalogue of Orbits and obta…
Stars in the solar neighbourhood have refractory element ratios slightly different from the Sun. It is unclear how much the condensation of solids and thus the composition of planets forming around these stars is affected. We aim to understand the impact of changing the ratios of refractory elements Mg, Si, and Fe within the range observed in solar type stars within 150~pc on the composition of planets forming around them. We use the GGchem code to simulate the condensation of solids in protoplanetary disks with a Minimum Mass Solar Nebula around main sequence G-type stars in the Solar neighbo…
Stellar initial mass function in the 100-pc solar neighbourhood
National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院国家天文台）；School of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学天文与空间科学学院）；Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy（马克斯·普朗克天文学研究所）
We present a self-consistent, absolute isochronal age scale for young (< 200 Myr), nearby (< 100 pc) moving groups in the solar neighbourhood based on homogeneous fitting of semi-empirical pre-main-sequence model isochrones using the tau^2 maximum-likelihood fitting statistic of Naylor & Jeffries in the M_V, V-J colour-magnitude diagram. The final adopted ages for the groups are: 149+51-19 Myr for the AB Dor moving group, 24+/-3 Myr for the β Pic moving group (BPMG), 45+11-7 Myr for the Carina association, 42+6-4 Myr for the Columba association, 11+/-3 Myr for the η Cha cluster, 45+/-4 Myr for…
We present the first results of a ground-based programme conducted on 1-4m class telescopes. Our sample consists of 1097 active and presumably young stars, all of them being optical counterparts of RASS X-ray sources in the northern hemisphere. We concentrate on the 704 optically brightest (V_Ticho<=9.5 mag) candidates. We acquired high-res spectroscopy in the Halpha/Li spectral regions for 426 of such stars without relevant literature data. We describe the sample and the observations and we start to discuss its physical properties. We used a cross-correlation technique and other tools to deri…
We find that the combined LF of N- and SC-type stars are consistent with a Gaussian distribution peaking at M_bol~ -5.2 mag. The resulting LF however shows two tails at lower and higher luminosities more extended than those previously found, indicating that AGB carbon stars with Solar metallicity may reach M_bol~-6.0 mag. We find that J-type stars are about half a magnitude fainter on average than N- and SC-type stars, while R-hot stars are half a magnitude brighter than previously found. The Galactic spatial distribution and velocity components of the N-, SC- and J-type stars are very similar…
Several recent studies of Solar twins in the Solar neighbourhood have shown a tight correlation between various elemental abundances and age, in particular [Y/Mg]. If this relation is real and valid for other types of stars as well as elsewhere in the Galaxy it would provide a very powerful tool to derive ages of stars without the need to resort to determining their masses (evolutionary stage) very precisely. The method would also likely work if the stellar parameters have relatively large errors. The studies presented in the recent literature span a narrow range of [Fe/H]. By studying a large…
We study the three dimensional arrangement of young stars in the solar neighbourhood using the second release of the Gaia mission (Gaia DR2) and we provide a new, original view of the spatial configuration of the star forming regions within 500 pc from the Sun. By smoothing the star distribution through a gaussian filter, we construct three dimensional density maps for early-type stars (upper-main sequence, UMS) and pre-main sequence (PMS) sources. The PMS and the UMS samples are selected through a combination of photometric and astrometric criteria. A side product of the analysis is a three d…
The scarcity of white dwarf-brown dwarf binaries in the solar neighbourhood: A population synthesis study
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚理工大学）；Institut d’Estudis Espacials de Catalunya（加泰罗尼亚空间研究所）；University of Leicester（莱斯特大学）；Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学）；CSST Science Center for the Guangdong-HongKong-Macau Great Bay Area, Sun Yat-sen University（中山大学粤港澳大湾区嫦娥科学中心）；Yunnan Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院云南天文台）；International Centre of Supernovae, Yunnan Key Laboratory（云南省超新星国际研究中心）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）
We determine detailed elemental abundances in stars belonging to the so-called Group 1 of the Geneva-Copenhagen survey (GCS) and compare the chemical composition with the Galactic thin- and thick-disc stars, with the GCS Group 2 and Group 3 stars, as well as with several kinematic streams of similar metallicities. The aim is to search for chemical signatures that might give information about the formation history of this kinematic group of stars. High-resolution spectra were obtained with the Fibre-fed Echelle Spectrograph (FIES) spectrograph at the Nordic Optical Telescope, La Palma, and were…
The cosmic origin of fluorine is still not well constrained. Several nucleosynthetic channels at different phases of stellar evolution have been suggested, but these must be constrained by observations. For this, the fluorine abundance trend with metallicity spanning a wide range is required. Our aim is to determine stellar abundances of fluorine for -1.1<[Fe/H]<+0.4. We determine the abundances from HF lines in infrared K-band spectra (at 2.3 microns) of cool giants, observed with the IGRINS and Phoenix high-resolution spectrographs. We derive accurate stellar parameters for all our observed …
The evolution of chemical elements in a galaxy is linked to its star formation history. Variations in star formation history are imprinted in the relative abundances of chemical elements produced in different supernova events and asymptotic giant branch stars. We determine detailed elemental abundances of s- and r-process elements in stars belonging to Group3 of the Geneva-Copenhagen survey and compare their chemical composition with Galactic disc stars. The aim is to look for possible chemical signatures that might give information about the formation history of this kinematic group of stars,…
Atmospheric parameters and chemical compositions for ten stars with metallicities in the region of -2.2< [Fe/H] <-0.6 were precisely determined using high resolution, high signal to noise, spectra. For each star the abundances, for 14 to 27 elements, were derived using both LTE and NLTE approaches. In particular, differences by assuming LTE or NLTE are about 0.10 dex; depending on [Fe/H], Teff, gravity and element lines used in the analysis. We find that the O abundance has the largest error, ranging from 0.10 and 0.2 dex. The best measured elements are Cr, Fe, and Mn; with errors etween 0.03 …
We derive age constraints for 1639 red giants in the APOKASC sample for which seismic parameters from Kepler, as well as effective temperatures, metallicities and [alpha/Fe] values from APOGEE DR12 are available. We investigate the relation between age and chemical abundances for these stars, using a simple and robust approach to obtain ages. We first derive stellar masses using standard seismic scaling relations, then determine the maximum possible age for each star as function of its mass and metallicity, independently of its evolutionary stage. While the overall trend between maximum age an…
For the first time, we present an extensive study of stars with individual non-local thermodynamic equilibrium (NLTE) abundances for 17 chemical elements from Li to Eu in a sample of stars uniformly distributed over the $-2.62 \le$ [Fe/H] $\le +0.24$ metallicity range that is suitable for the Galactic chemical evolution research. The star sample has been kinematically selected to trace the Galactic thin and thick disks and halo. We find new and improve earlier results as follows. (i) The element-to-iron ratios for Mg, Si, Ca, and Ti form a MP plateau at a similar height of 0.3~dex, and the kne…
Two stellar clocks, one history: a Gaia colour-magnitude-diagram reconstruction of the solar-neighbourhood star-formation history tested against white dwarfs
Università di Pisa（比萨大学）；INFN（意大利国家核物理研究所）；INAF - Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna（博洛尼亚天体物理学与空间科学天文台）
The aim of this paper is to characterise the abundance patterns of five iron-peak elements (Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, and Zn) for which the stellar origin and chemical evolution are still debated. We automatically derived iron peak (Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, and Zn) and alpha element (Mg) chemical abundances for 4666 stars. We used the bimodal distribution of [Mg/Fe] to chemically classify sample stars into different Galactic substructures: thin disc, metal-poor and high-alpha metal rich, high-alpha and low-alpha metal-poor populations. High-alpha and low-alpha metal-poor populations are fully distinct in Mg, Cu,…
From correlations between orbital parameters, several new coherent groups of stars were recently identified in the Galactic disc and suggested to correspond to remnants of disrupted satellites. To reconstruct their origin at least three main observational parameters - kinematics, chemical composition and age - must be known. We determine detailed elemental abundances in stars belonging to the so-called Group 2 of the Geneva-Copenhagen Survey and compare the chemical composition with Galactic thin- and thick-disc stars, as well as with the Arcturus and AF06 streams. The aim is to search for che…
Isotope ratios have opened a new window into the study of the details of stellar evolution, supernovae, and galactic chemical evolution. We present the evolution of the isotope ratios of elemental abundances (from C to Zn) in the solar neighbourhood, bulge, halo, and thick disk, using chemical evolution models with updated yields of Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars and core-collapse supernovae. The evolutionary history of each element is different owing to the effects of the initial progenitor mass and metallicity on element production. In the bulge and thick disk the star formation timesca…
Exploring the Milky Way stellar disk. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur, potassium, and copper abundances for 714 F- and G-type dwarf stars in the solar neighbourhood
The aim of this work is to determine abundances of neutron-capture elements for thin- and thick-disc F, G, and K stars in several sky fields near the north ecliptic pole and to compare the results with the Galactic chemical evolution models, to explore elemental gradients according to stellar ages, mean galactocentric distances, and maximum heights above the Galactic plane. The observational data were obtained with the 1.65m telescope at the Moletai Astronomical Observatory and a fibre-fed high-resolution spectrograph. Elemental abundances were determined using a differential spectrum synthesi…
