How do I find the age of a star?

ageorge95

I'm a yr 12 student doing a full year research assignment and i have decided to find the age of the star, Sirius. I have access to a pretty good telescope and equipment but I am not sure where to start. Suggestions anyone?

Drakkith

This is generally not possible with individual stars. See here for more.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...ntists-determi

Cosmo Novice

As Drakkith has advised this is generally not possible with individual stars, what you could do however is start your assignment on the pretence of finding the age of the star. Then outline the reasons this is not going to be particularly accurate as your main body of work - would still be a good assignment.

Cosmo

e^(i Pi)+1=0

Couldn't you get a good approximation by its spectra? The more heavy elements, the older the star.

ageorge95

I was hoping to do just that and use the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram which requires the luminosity and colour of a star to determine the age of the star. How would I do get this information using a telescope?

ageorge95

Thanks for the advice Cosmo Novice and Drakkith the link was very useful thank you

phyzguy

This isn't correct. Stars create more heavy elements through fusion as they age, but these heavy elements remain in the core of the star and don't migrate to the surface. The spectrum only sees the surface of the star, and hence just tells you what the initial composition of the star was when it was born. So stars with more heavy elements were formed more recently, and the amount of heavy elements you see in the spectrum doesn't change as the star ages.

Chronos

Using stellar evolutionary models, we have a fairly good guess as to the age of Sirius. The presence of its white dwarf companion star was an obvious plus given an accurate mass estimate is vitally important in such modelling. See http://www.astronomy.com/en/sitecore...irius%20B.aspx
The original paper can be found at: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0507523v2.pdf
Note that the authors had access to some pretty sophisticated data, and the proximity of Sirius to earth certainly didn't hurt.

Drakkith

The Hertzspurng-Russel diagram does not let you determine the age of the star. It merely shows "the relationship between the stars' absolute magnitudes or luminosities versus their spectral types or classifications and effective temperatures." -Quoted from wikipedia.

This means that if you have a star that is 10 times the Suns luminosity and and was white in color it would be a Main Sequence star. If the star had 100 times the luminosity of the Sun and was very Red in color, it's surface temperature is very cool, meaning it's grown to a large size and is on Branch III, the "Giant" branch.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi.../HRDiagram.png

Radrook

This method [a new one presently limited to certain types of stars] is based on how fast the star is spinning.

Gyrochronology
http://www.google.com/search?sourcei...W_enUS378US378

Drakkith

Nice! Never heard of that before, thanks Radrook.

ageorge95

Thanks for the suggestion Radrook. Do you think that I can measure stellar rotation with a 10" LX200 SCHMIDT CASSEGRAIN TELESCOPE. It looks like this:

Radrook

This is what they use to make these observations possible:

So we have:

1. Hectospec & Hectochelle
2. Telescope on Mt. Hopkins
3. Keppler Mission Data





Links for the SCHMIDT CASSEGRAIN TELESCOPE that delineate its capabilities.






BTW
Observation from the ground without using Keppler will significantly limit the range of stars that can be assessed

Radrook

Welcomed.

ageorge95

Since I cannot find the age of a star individually how would I find the age of a star cluster?

cepheid

This is something you would use a Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram for. The idea is that for stars on the main sequence, the ones that are bluer, hotter, and more luminous don't "live" for as long as the stars that are redder, cooler, and dimmer. The reason for this is that the hotter and more luminous stars have a larger mass. More mass means a higher central core temperature. A higher core temperature means a higher rate of nuclear fusion. Now, the "lifetime" of a star is defined as the amount of time it spends on the main sequence. The main sequence is defined as the portion of the stellar life cycle during which stars produce energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in their cores. If the hotter and more luminous stars have a higher fusion rate, then they will run out of their nuclear fuel (hydrogen) in their cores sooner than the dimmer stars. Therefore, the hotter and brighter stars will spend less time on the main sequence. Once they run out of core hydrogen and fusion ceases, the stellar radii and surface temperatures change. This causes those stars to move off the main sequence on the H-R diagram. They move up and to the right onto the red giant branch (corresponding to becoming brighter and having cooler surface temperatures).

The net effect of this is that if you assume that all the stars in the cluster were roughly born at the same time, then there will be certain point on the main sequence to the left of which stars simply don't exist (i.e. that portion of the main sequence is missing). The reason is because the lifetimes of stars bluer than this are shorter than the age of the cluster. So stars of those spectral types have already "veered" off the main sequence and onto the giant branch. We call this point on the H-R diagram at which the main sequence cuts off the "main sequence turn-off point." The older a cluster is, the farther to the right the main sequence turn-off point will be (because in an older cluster even the cooler, dimmer, and more longer-lived stars have "died" i.e. evolved off the main sequence).

So, you can age a cluster simply by looking at where the main sequence turn-off point occurs. The age of the cluster is equal to the main sequence lifetime of the stars at the turn-off point.

ageorge95

Thanks Cepheid. So you're saying all I need to do is find the luminosity and colour and apply this to the HR diagram. I only have two questions.
1. How do I measure luminosity and colour using a telescope?
2. How do I convert the point on the HR diagram to the age of the cluster?
Sorry for asking basic questions but there is little information on the internet on how to do this.