Tuesday, June 15, 2010

4 Clusters Choosen

So I have now chosen four clusters and approximately three stars in each cluster. These clusters are M37, NGC 752, Collinder 350, and Melotte 111 (Coma Berenices). I choose them based on age (old enough to have red giants), quality of UBV data, location in the sky, and not already being in a planet survey.

Starting out, I searched through WEBDA's list to find open clusters with positive declination visible during the summer from Hawaii and having log age > 8.5 . I found that clusters with log age less than 8.5 were usually too young to have red giants.

I plotted the B-V vrs. V for each cluster and used published parameters (either on WEBDA or in papers) to get an approximate fit for each cluster. If things did not work at all or the UBV data was scarce and not clear, I would pass the cluster over.


Once I thought a cluster passed those tests, I choose individual stars to get a rough mass estimate for. Since this is a first rough test, I merely computed which point on the theoretical isochrone was closest to the star distance wise. When I go through after getting my own cluster parameters, I will compute the PDF, by analyzing B-V and V separately with their own standard deviations (not just as distance) and assuming Gaussian distributions. That way I will actually be able to get error bounds as well.

Even though I wanted to get an even mass range, I ended up getting a lot of 2.7 mass stars in M37, Collinder 350, and Melotte 111 with 1.7 mass stars in NGC 752. I need older clusters to get lower mass stars, but most clusters, other than NGC 752 and a few others, have dissipated by 1 Gyr of age.

As a continuation of yesterdays post, it was mostly the one star I was focused on that wasn't working. That particular star still doesn't work, but other stars have been looked up in both SINBAD and Hipparcos. Some stars still do not show in the catalogs, but for several I was able to get a more accurate location, official names, and variability information. Some of the 12 stars I had initially chosen now have to get thrown out for either being spectroscopic binaries or microscopically variable.

No comments:

Post a Comment