HyPra: Anchoring the Rotation-Activity Relation At 600 Myr

众所周知，恒星的年龄很难确定，而我们目前无法测量恒星的年龄，这严重限制了我们在天体物理学许多领域的进展。例如，一颗恒星的年龄就是它的行星的年龄，我们必须知道它的年龄，以便评估一颗给定的行星是否有适宜生命生存的条件。这项工作促进了我们对年龄的可观测代理的理解，即恒星的旋转和磁活动，因此我们最终可以利用这些来获得质量小于太阳的恒星的年龄。它还将支持一个动手教师培训项目，为纽约市公立学校的天文学俱乐部提供种子和支持。年龄-旋转-活动关系（ARAR）的存在已经被发现了40年，这给人们带来了希望，即通过测量旋转或活动可以获得孤立场恒星的年龄。本项目将通过对疏散星团恒星的观测，改进ARAR的经验定标。这些恒星明确的年龄使它们成为测量自转周期和磁活动指标（如h - α和x射线光度）的有价值的目标。该项目的目标是完成对Hyades和Praesepe两个关键星团的旋转和磁场活动的敏感、公正的调查，这两个星团附近有600万年的历史。新的观测结果将用于以不依赖质量的方式检验自转和活动之间的关系。这将有助于校准超过100兆尔的低质量ARAR。

The ages of stars are notoriously difficult to determine, and our current inability to measure stellar ages is severely limiting our progress in many areas of astrophysics. For example, the age of a star is the age of its planets, and we must know the age in order to evaluate the likelihood that a given planet has conditions favorable to life. This work advances our understanding of observable proxies for age, namely a star's rotation and magnetic activity, so that we can eventually use these to obtain ages for stars less massive than the Sun. It will also support a hands-on teacher-training program that seeds and supports astronomy clubs at public schools around New York City. The existence of an age-rotation-activity relation (ARAR) has been known for 40 years now, generating hope that measurements of rotation or activity could be used to obtain the ages of isolated field stars. This project will improve the empirical calibration of the ARAR by using observations of stars in open clusters. These stars' well-defined ages make them valuable targets for measuring rotation periods and indicators of magnetic activity such as H-alpha and X-ray luminosities. The goal of the project is to complete a sensitive, unbiased survey of rotation and magnetic activity in the Hyades and Praesepe, two key, nearby 600-Myr-old clusters. New observations will be used to test the relationship between rotation and activity in a mass-independent manner. This will help calibrate the low-mass ARAR beyond 100 Myr.