Abstract
Young stellar associations represent a key site for the study of star formation, but to accurately compare observations to models of stellar evolution, the age of an association must be ...determined. The Upper Scorpius region is the youngest section of the Scorpius–Centaurus OB association, which is the largest collection of nearby, young, low-mass stars. The true age of Upper Scorpius is not clear, and an observed mass-dependent age gradient in Upper Scorpius, as well as in other star-forming regions, complicates age measurements. The age gradient may indicate a genuine astrophysical feature or may be an artifact of unrecognized systematic effects in stellar age measurements. We have conducted a synthetic red-optical low-resolution spectroscopic survey of a simulated analog to the Upper Scorpius star-forming region to investigate the effects of unresolved binary stars (which have mass-dependent demographics) on age measurements of a stellar population. We found that the observed mass-dependent age gradient in Upper Scorpius can be explained by a population of undetected binary stars. For a simulated population with an age of 10 (rms = 2) Myr, we measured an age of 10.5 (rms = 3.5) Myr for F stars and of 7.5 (rms = 5.8) Myr for M stars. This discrepancy is caused by the mass-dependent mass ratio distribution and the variable steepness of the mass–luminosity relation. Our results support the previously suggested 10 Myr age for Upper Scorpius, with a small intrinsic age spread.
Abstract
The Taurus-Auriga complex is the prototypical low-mass star-forming region, and provides a unique testbed of the star formation process, which left observable imprints on the spatial, ...kinematic, and temporal structure of its stellar population. Taurus’s rich observational history has uncovered peculiarities that suggest a complicated star-forming event, such as members at large distances from the molecular clouds and evidence of an age spread. With Gaia, an in-depth study of the Taurus census is possible, to confirm membership, identify substructure, and reconstruct its star formation history. We have compiled an expansive census of the greater Taurus region, identifying spatial subgroups and confirming that Taurus is substructured across stellar density. There are two populations of subgroups: clustered groups near the clouds and sparse groups spread throughout the region. The sparse groups comprise Taurus’s distributed population, which is on average older than the population near the clouds, and hosts subpopulations up to 15 Myr old. The ages of the clustered groups increase with distance, suggesting that the current star formation was triggered from behind. Still, the region is kinematically coherent, and its velocity structure reflects an initial turbulent spectrum similar to Larson’s Law that has been modified by dynamical relaxation. Overall, Taurus has a complicated star formation history, with at least two epochs of star formation featuring both clustered and distributed modes. Given the correlations between age and spatial distribution, Taurus might be part of a galaxy-scale star-forming event that can only begin to be understood in the Gaia era.
The coolest known brown dwarfs are our best analogs to extrasolar gas-giant planets. The prolific detections of such cold substellar objects in the past 2 years have spurred intensive follow-up, but ...the lack of accurate distances is a key gap in our understanding; We present a large sample of precise distances based on homogeneous mid-infrared astrometry that robustly establishes absolute fluxes, luminosities, and temperatures. The coolest brown dwarfs have temperatures of 400 to 450 kelvin and masses almost equal to 5 to 20 times that of Jupiter, showing they bridge the gap between hotter brown dwarfs and gas-giant planets. At these extremes, spectral energy distributions no longer follow a simple correspondence with temperature, suggesting an increasing role of other physical parameters, such as surface gravity, vertical mixing, clouds, and metallicity.
An accurate and precise Kepler Stellar Properties Catalog is essential for the interpretation of the Kepler exoplanet survey results. Previous Kepler Stellar Properties Catalogs have focused on ...reporting the best-available parameters for each star, but this has required combining data from a variety of heterogeneous sources. We present the Gaia-Kepler Stellar Properties Catalog, a set of stellar properties of 186,301 Kepler stars, homogeneously derived from isochrones and broadband photometry, Gaia Data Release 2 parallaxes, and spectroscopic metallicities, where available. Our photometric effective temperatures, derived from colors, are calibrated on stars with interferometric angular diameters. Median catalog uncertainties are 112 K for , 0.05 dex for , 4% for , 7% for , 13% for , 10% for , and 56% for stellar age. These precise constraints on stellar properties for this sample of stars will allow unprecedented investigations into trends in stellar and exoplanet properties as a function of stellar mass and age. In addition, our homogeneous parameter determinations will permit more accurate calculations of planet occurrence and trends with stellar properties.
Abstract Young stars form in associations, meaning that young stellar associations provide an ideal environment to measure the age of a nominally coeval population. Isochrone fitting, which is the ...typical method for measuring the age of a coeval population, can be impacted by observational biases that obscure the physical properties of a population. One feature in isochrone fits of star-forming regions is an apparent mass-dependent age gradient, where lower-mass stars appear systematically younger than higher-mass stars. Starspots and stellar multiplicity are proposed mechanisms for producing the mass-dependent age gradient, but the relative importance of starspots versus multiplicity remains unclear. We performed a synthetic red optical low-resolution spectroscopic survey of a simulated analog to a 10 Myr stellar association including mass-dependent multiplicity statistics and age-dependent starspot coverage fractions. We found that undetected starspots alone do not produce an apparent mass-dependent age gradient, but instead uniformly reduce the average measured age of the population. We also found that binaries continue to produce an apparent mass-dependent age gradient and introduce more scatter in the age measurement than spots, but are easily removed from the population as long as there are good distance measurements to each target. We conclude that it is crucial to incorporate treatments of both starspots and undetected stellar multiplicity into isochrone fits of young stellar associations to attain reliable ages.
The mass-luminosity relation for late-type stars has long been a critical tool for estimating stellar masses. However, there is growing need for both a higher-precision relation and a better ...understanding of systematic effects (e.g., metallicity). Here we present an empirical relationship between and M* spanning 0.075 M < M* < 0.70 M . The relation is derived from 62 nearby binaries, whose orbits we determine using a combination of Keck/NIRC2 imaging, archival adaptive optics data, and literature astrometry. From their orbital parameters, we determine the total mass of each system, with a precision better than 1% in the best cases. We use these total masses, in combination with resolved KS magnitudes and system parallaxes, to calibrate the -M* relation. The resulting posteriors can be used to determine masses of single stars with a precision of 2%-3%, which we confirm by testing the relation on stars with individual dynamical masses from the literature. The precision is limited by scatter around the best-fit relation beyond measured M* uncertainties, perhaps driven by intrinsic variation in the -M* relation or underestimated uncertainties in the input parallaxes. We find that the effect of Fe/H on the -M* relation is likely negligible for metallicities in the solar neighborhood (0.0% 2.2% change in mass per dex change in Fe/H). This weak effect is consistent with predictions from the Dartmouth Stellar Evolution Database, but inconsistent with those from MESA Isochrones and Stellar Tracks (at 5 ). A sample of binaries with a wider range of abundances will be required to discern the importance of metallicity in extreme populations (e.g., in the Galactic halo or thick disk).
ABSTRACT The dynamical influence of binary companions is expected to profoundly influence planetary systems. However, the difficulty of identifying planets in binary systems has left the magnitude of ...this effect uncertain; despite numerous theoretical hurdles to their formation and survival, at least some binary systems clearly host planets. We present high-resolution imaging of 382 Kepler Objects of Interest (KOIs) obtained using adaptive-optics imaging and nonredundant aperture-mask interferometry on the Keck II telescope. Among the full sample of 506 candidate binary companions to KOIs, we super-resolve some binary systems to projected separations of <5 au, showing that planets might form in these dynamically active environments. However, the full distribution of projected separations for our planet-host sample more broadly reveals a deep paucity of binary companions at solar-system scales. For a field binary population, we should have found 58 binary companions with projected separation < 50 au and mass ratio q > 0.4; we instead only found 23 companions (a 4.6 deficit), many of which must be wider pairs that are only close in projection. When the binary population is parametrized with a semimajor axis cutoff acut and a suppression factor inside that cutoff Sbin, we find with correlated uncertainties that inside au, the planet occurrence rate in binary systems is only times that of wider binaries or single stars. Our results demonstrate that a fifth of all solar-type stars in the Milky Way are disallowed from hosting planetary systems due to the influence of a binary companion.
Young and directly imaged exoplanets offer critical tests of planet-formation models that are not matched by radial velocity surveys of mature stars. These targets have been extremely elusive to ...date, with no exoplanets younger than 10-20 Myr and only a handful of direct-imaged exoplanets at all ages.We report the direct-imaging discovery of a likely (proto)planet around the young (~2 Myr) solar analog LkCa 15, located inside a known gap in the protoplanetary disk (a "transitional disk"). The discovery is the first direct evidence that at least some transitional disks do indeed host newly formed (or forming) exoplanetary systems, and the observed properties provide crucial insight into the gas giant formation process.
Abstract
Accretion is one of the defining characteristics of classical T Tauri stars, fueled by the presence of a circumstellar disk comprised of dust and gas. Accretion produces a UV and optical ...excess, while re-radiated emission at the inner edge of the dust component of the disk produces a near-infrared (NIR) excess. The interplay between stars and their disks helps regulate protoplanetary disk evolution and dispersal, which is key to a full understanding of planet formation. To investigate the relations between NIR excess and optical excess in both single and binary stars, we used an archival sample of spectroscopically characterized members of the Taurus star-forming region (
τ
∼ 1–2 Myr) with measured luminosities, spectral types, and optical veiling. We combined the archival sample with the Two Micron All Sky Survey and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer NIR photometry and high-resolution imaging surveys. We found that NIR and optical excesses are correlated in multiple NIR photometric bands, suggesting that they are closely related, likely because more massive disks have higher inner dust disk walls and are also associated with higher accretion rates. We also found that multiplicity has no impact on accretion or inner disk properties in a sample with a wide range of separations, but the sample was too small to specifically investigate close binaries, where the effects of multiplicity on disk properties should be most significant.
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