Presentation Abstract

Presentation Number 153.05
Presentation Time: Monday, Jan 10, 2011, 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM
Title Stellar Rotation and Activity at 1 Gyr: The Palomar Transient Factory Does NGC 752
Author Block Marcel A. Agueros1, P. A. Cargile2, K. R. Covey3, A. L. Kraus4, N. M. Law5, K. G. Stassun2
1Columbia Univ., 2Vanderbilt Univ., 3Cornell Univ., 4Univ. of Hawaii, 5Univ. of Toronto, Canada.
Abstract Large uncertainties remain in our picture of the evolution of stellar rotation and activity in Sun-like stars after they reach the age of the Hyades, roughly 0.5 Gyr. Rotation periods are scarce for stars at these ages, seriously complicating the calibration of an age-rotation-activity relation that could be applied to field stars. The Columbia/Cornell/Caltech Palomar Transient Factory (CCCP) survey of open clusters is an effort to systematically map stellar rotation in nearby open clusters. We present preliminary results from our on-going CCCP campaign on NGC 752, a ~1 Gyr open cluster for which we have several hundred individual R-band observations. At a distance of only ~450 parsecs, and with deep archival X-ray observations, it represents the best opportunity we have to study the age-rotation-activity relation in main sequence stars at an age about a quarter that of the Sun.