https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20134305003
A consistency test of white dwarf and main sequence ages: NGC 6791
1 Departament de Física Aplicada, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, c/Esteve Terrades, 5, 08860 Castelldefels, Spain
2 Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia, c/Gran Capità 2–4, Edif. Nexus 104, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
3 Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (CSIC), Facultat de Ciències, Campus UAB, Torre C5-parell, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain
4 Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, 12 Quays House, Birkenhead, CH41 1LD, UK
5 Facultad de Ciencias Astronómicas y Geofísicas, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Paseo del Bosque s/n, (1900) La Plata, Argentina
NGC 6791 is an open cluster that it is so close to us that can be imaged down to very faint luminosities. The main sequence turn-off age (∼8 Gyr) and the age derived from the cut-off of the white dwarf luminosity function (∼6 Gyr) were found to be significantly different. Here we demonstrate that the origin of this age discrepancy lies in an incorrect evaluation of the white dwarf cooling ages, and we show that when the relevant physical separation processes are included in the calculation of white dwarf sequences both ages are coincident.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2013
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
