Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 823, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/823/2/114
Keywords
Galaxy: stellar content; methods: data analysis; methods: statistical; stars: evolution; stars: fundamental parameters; techniques: spectroscopic
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council under the European Union [321035]
- National Science Foundation [NSF PHY11-25915]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
- University of Arizona
- Brazilian Participation Group
- Brookhaven National Laboratory
- Carnegie Mellon University
- University of Florida
- French Participation Group
- German Participation Group
- Harvard University
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
- Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group
- Johns Hopkins University
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
- Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
- New Mexico State University
- New York University
- Ohio State University
- Pennsylvania State University
- University of Portsmouth
- Princeton University
- Spanish Participation Group
- University of Tokyo
- University of Utah
- Vanderbilt University
- University of Virginia
- University of Washington
- Yale University
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/M000966/1] Funding Source: researchfish
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The mass of a star is arguably its most fundamental parameter. For red giant stars, tracers luminous enough to be observed across the Galaxy, mass implies a stellar evolution age. It has proven to be extremely difficult to infer ages and masses directly from red giant spectra using existing methods. From the Kepler and APOGEE surveys, samples of several thousand stars exist with high-quality spectra and asteroseismic masses. Here we show that from these data we can build a data-driven spectral model using The. Cannon, which can determine stellar masses to similar to 0.07 dex from APOGEE DR12 spectra of red giants; these imply age estimates accurate to similar to 0.2 dex (40%). We show that The. Cannon constrains these ages foremost from spectral regions with CN absorption lines, elements whose surface abundances reflect mass-dependent dredge-up. We deliver an unprecedented catalog of 70,000 giants (including 20,000 red clump stars) with mass and age estimates, spanning the entire disk (from the Galactic center to R similar to 20 kpc). We show that the age information in the spectra is not simply a corollary of the birth-material abundances [Fe/H] and [alpha/Fe], and that, even within a monoabundance population of stars, there are age variations that vary sensibly with Galactic position. Such stellar age constraints across the Milky Way open up new avenues in Galactic archeology.
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