Revisiting the Census and Age of the Beta Pictoris Moving Group in the Gaia Era

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2022
Authors
Lee, Rena Aerey
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Gaidos, Eric
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Earth and Planetary Sciences
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Determining the precise ages of young (~10 to few hundred Myr) kinematic ("moving") groups is important for placing star, protoplanetary disk, and planet observations on an evolutionary timeline. The nearby ~25 Myr-old Beta Pictoris Moving Group (BPMG) is an important benchmark for studying stars and planetary systems at the end of the primordial disk phase. Gaia DR3 astrometry combined with ground-based observations and more sophisticated stellar models permit a systematic re-evaluation of its membership and age. We combined Gaia astrometry with previous and new radial velocities to evaluate moving-group membership in a Bayesian framework. To minimize the effect of unresolved stellar multiplicity on age estimates, we identified and excluded multi-star systems using Gaia astrometry, ground-based adaptive optics imaging, and multi-epoch radial velocities, as well as the literature identifications. We estimated age using isochrone and lithium-depletion-boundary fitting with models that account for the effect of magnetic activity and spots on young, rapidly rotating stars. We report an age of 33(+9/-11) Myr to the BPMG based on isochrone fitting to the single-star and resolved-binary sample, which is older than, but within the uncertainties of, literature values.
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Astronomy, evolutionary models, star-planet connections, stellar ages, stellar evolution, stellar multiplicity, young moving groups
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56 pages
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