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Context. The surface structures and dynamics of cool stars are characterised by the presence of convective motions and turbulent flows which shape the emergent spectrum. Aims. We used realistic three-dimensional (3D) radiative hydrodynamical simulations from the STAGGER-grid to calculate synthetic spectra with the radiative transfer code OPTIM3D for stars with different stellar parameters to predict photometric colours and convective velocity shifts. Methods. We calculated spectra from 1000 to 200 000Å with a constant resolving power of λ/Ξλ = 20 000 and from 8470 and 8710Å (Gaia Radial Velocity Spectrometer - RVS - spectral range) with a constant resolving power of λ/Ξλ = 300 000. Results. We used synthetic spectra to compute theoretical colours in the Johnson-Cousins UBV(RI)C, SDSS, 2MASS, Gaia, SkyMapper, Strömgren systems, and HST-WFC3. Our synthetic magnitudes are compared with those obtained using 1D hydrostatic models. We showed that 1D versus 3D differences are limited to a small percent except for the narrow filters that span the optical and UV region of the spectrum. In addition, we derived the effect of the convective velocity fields on selected Fe I lines. We found the overall convective shift for 3D simulations with respect to the reference 1D hydrostatic models, revealing line shifts of between -0.235 and +0.361 km s-1.We showed a net correlation of the convective shifts with the effective temperature: lower effective temperatures denote redshifts and higher effective temperatures denote blueshifts. We conclude that the extraction of accurate radial velocities from RVS spectra need an appropriate wavelength correction from convection shifts. Conclusions. The use of realistic 3D hydrodynamical stellar atmosphere simulations has a small but significant impact on the predicted photometry compared with classical 1D hydrostatic models for late-type stars.We make all the spectra publicly available for the community through the POLLUX database. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deciphering the assembly history of the Milky Way is a formidable task, which becomes possible only if one can produce high-resolution chrono-chemo-kinematical maps of the Galaxy. Data from large-scale astrometric and spectroscopic surveys will soon provide us with a well-defined view of the current chemo-kinematical structure of the Milky Way, but it will only enable a blurred view on the temporal sequence that led to the present-day Galaxy. As demonstrated by the (ongoing) exploitation of data from the pioneering photometric missions CoRoT, Kepler, and K2, asteroseismology provides the way forward: solar-like oscillating giants are excellent evolutionary clocks thanks to the availability of seismic constraints on their mass and to the tight age-initial mass relation they adhere to. In this paper we identify five key outstanding questions relating to the formation and evolution of the Milky Way that will need precise and accurate ages for large samples of stars to be addressed, and we identify the requirements in terms of number of targets and the precision on the stellar properties that are needed to tackle such questions. By quantifying the asteroseismic yields expected from PLATO for red giant stars, we demonstrate that these requirements are within the capabilities of the current instrument design, provided that observations are sufficiently long to identify the evolutionary state and allow robust and precise determination of acoustic-mode frequencies. This will allow us to harvest data of sufficient quality to reach a 10% precision in age. This is a fundamental prerequisite to then reach the more ambitious goal of a similar level of accuracy, which will be possible only if we have at hand a careful appraisal of systematic uncertainties on age deriving from our limited understanding of stellar physics, a goal that conveniently falls within the main aims of PLATO's core science. We therefore strongly endorse PLATO's current design and proposed observational strategy, and conclude that PLATO, as it is, will be a legacy mission for Galactic archaeology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of a vertical age gradient in the Milky Way disc has been indirectly known for long. Here, we measure it directly for the first time with seismic ages, using red giants observed by Kepler. We use Strömgren photometry to gauge the selection function of asteroseismic targets, and derive colour and magnitude limits where giants with measured oscillations are representative of the underlying population in the field. Limits in the 2MASS system are also derived. We lay out a method to assess and correct for target selection effects independent of Galaxy models. We find that low-mass, i.e. old red giants dominate at increasing Galactic heights, whereas closer to the Galactic plane they exhibit a wide range of ages and metallicities. Parametrizing this as a vertical gradient returns approximately 4 Gyr kpc-1 for the disc we probe, although with a large dispersion of ages at all heights. The ages of stars show a smooth distribution over the last 1≃0 Gyr, consistent with a mostly quiescent evolution for the Milky Way disc since a redshift of about 2. We also find a flat age--metallicity relation for disc stars. Finally, we show how to use secondary clump stars to estimate the present-day intrinsic metallicity spread, and suggest using their number count as a new proxy for tracing the ageing of the disc. This work highlights the power of asteroseismology for Galactic studies; however, we also emphasize the need for better constraints on stellar mass-loss, which is a major source of systematic age uncertainties in red giant stars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) survey is a large high-resolution spectro-scopic survey using the newly commissioned High Efficiency and Resolution Multi-Element Spectrograph (HERMES) on the Anglo-Australian Telescope. The HERMES spectrograph provides high-resolution (R ~ 28 000) spectra in four passbands for 392 stars simultaneously over a 2 deg field of view. The goal of the survey is to unravel the formation and evolution-ary history of the Milky Way, using fossil remnants of ancient star formation events which have been disrupted and are now dispersed throughout the Galaxy. Chemical tagging seeks to identify such dispersed remnants solely from their common and unique chemical signatures; these groups are unidentifiable from their spatial, photometric or kinematic properties. To carry out chemical tagging, the GALAH survey will acquire spectra for a million stars down to V ~ 14. The HERMES spectra of FGK stars contain absorption lines from 29 elements including light proton-capture elements, a-elements, odd-Z elements, iron-peak elements and n-capture elements from the light and heavy s-process and the r-process. This paper describes the motivation and planned execution of the GALAH survey, and presents some results on the first-light performance of HERMES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first results of the EMBLA survey (Extremely Metal-poor BuLge stars with AAOmega), aimed at finding metal-poor stars in the Milky Way bulge, where the oldest stars should now preferentially reside. EMBLA utilizes SkyMapper photometry to pre-select metal-poor candidates, which are subsequently confirmed using AAOmega spectroscopy. We describe the discovery and analysis of four bulge giants with −2.72 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ −2.48, the lowest metallicity bulge stars studied with high-resolution spectroscopy to date. Using FLAMES/UVES spectra through the Gaia-ESO Survey we have derived abundances of twelve elements. Given the uncertainties, we find a chemical similarity between these bulge stars and halo stars of the same metallicity, although the abundance scatter may be larger, with some of the stars showing unusual [α/Fe] ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ages have been derived for 55 globular clusters (GCs) for which Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys photometry is publicly available. For most of them, the assumed distances are based on fits of theoretical zero-age horizontal-branch (ZAHB) loci to the lower bound of the observed distributions of HB stars, assuming reddenings from empirical dust maps and metallicities from the latest spectroscopic analyses. The age of the isochrone that provides the best fit to the stars in the vicinity of the turnoff (TO) is taken to be the best estimate of the cluster age. The morphology of isochrones between the TO and the beginning part of the subgiant branch (SGB) is shown to be nearly independent of age and chemical abundances. For well-defined color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), the error bar arising just from the “fitting” of ZAHBs and isochrones is ≈ ± 0.25 Gyr, while that associated with distance and chemical abundance uncertainties is ∼ ± 1.5-2 Gyr. The oldest GCs in our sample are predicted to have ages of ≈13.0 Gyr (subject to the aforementioned uncertainties). However, the main focus of this investigation is on relative GC ages. In conflict with recent findings based on the relative main-sequence fitting method, which have been studied in some detail and reconciled with our results, ages are found to vary from mean values of ≈12.5 Gyr at [Fe/H] ≲ – 1.7 to ≈11 Gyr at [Fe/H] ≳ –1. At intermediate metallicities, the age-metallicity relation (AMR) appears to be bifurcated: one branch apparently contains clusters with disk-like kinematics, whereas the other branch, which is displaced to lower [Fe/H] values by ≈0.6 dex at a fixed age, is populated by clusters with halo-type orbits. The dispersion in age about each component of the AMR is ∼ ± 0.5 Gyr. There is no apparent dependence of age on Galactocentric distance (RG) nor is there a clear correlation of HB type with age. As previously discovered in the case of M3 and M13, subtle variations have been found in the slope of the SGB in the CMDs of other metal-poor ([Fe/H] ≲ – 1.5) GCs. They have been tentatively attributed to cluster-to-cluster differences in the abundance of helium. Curiously, GCs that have relatively steep “M13-like” SGBs tend to be massive systems, located at small RG, that show the strongest evidence of in situ formation of multiple stellar populations. The clusters in the other group are typically low-mass systems (with 2-3 exceptions, including M3) that, at the present time, should not be able to retain the matter lost by mass-losing stars due either to the development of GC winds or to ram-pressure stripping by the halo interstellar medium. The apparent separation of the two groups in terms of their present-day gas retention properties is difficult to understand if all GCs were initially ∼20 times their current masses. The lowest-mass systems, in particular, may have never been massive enough to retain enough gas to produce a significant population of second-generation stars. In this case, the observed light element abundance variations, which are characteristic of all GCs, were presumably present in the gas out of which the observed cluster stars formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately determining the properties of stars is of prime importance for characterizing stellar populations in our Galaxy. The field of asteroseismology has been thought to be particularly successful in such an endeavor for stars in different evolutionary stages. However, to fully exploit its potential, robust methods for estimating stellar parameters are required and independent verification of the results is mandatory. With this purpose, we present a new technique to obtain stellar properties by coupling asteroseismic analysis with the InfraRed Flux Method. By using two global seismic observables and multi-band photometry, the technique allows us to obtain masses, radii, effective temperatures, bolometric fluxes, and hence distances for field stars in a self-consistent manner. We apply our method to 22 solar-like oscillators in the Kepler short-cadence sample, that have accurate Hipparcos parallaxes. Our distance determinations agree to better than 5%, while measurements of spectroscopic effective temperatures and interferometric radii also validate our results. We briefly discuss the potential of our technique for stellar population analysis and models of Galactic Chemical Evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photometric data in the UBV(RI)C system have been acquired for 80 solar analog stars for which we have previously derived highly precise atmospheric parameters Teff, log g, and [Fe/H] using high-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio spectra. UBV and (RI)C data for 46 and 76 of these stars, respectively, are published for the first time. Combining our data with those from the literature, colors in the UBV(RI)C system, with ≃ 0.01 mag precision, are now available for 112 solar analogs. Multiple linear regression is used to derive the solar colors from these photometric data and the spectroscopically derived Teff, log g, and [Fe/H] values. To minimize the impact of systematic errors in the model-dependent atmospheric parameters, we use only the data for the 10 stars that most closely resemble our Sun, i.e., the solar twins, and derive the following solar colors: (B – V)☼ = 0.653 ± 0.005, (U – B)☼ = 0.166 ± 0.022, (V – R)☼ = 0.352 ± 0.007, and (V – I)☼ = 0.702 ± 0.010. These colors are consistent, within the 1σ errors, with those derived using the entire sample of 112 solar analogs. We also derive the solar colors using the relation between spectral-line-depth ratios and observed stellar colors, i.e., with a completely model-independent approach, and without restricting the analysis to solar twins. We find (B – V)☼ = 0.653 ± 0.003, (U – B)☼ = 0.158 ± 0.009, (V – R)☼ = 0.356 ± 0.003, and (V – I)☼ = 0.701 ± 0.003, in excellent agreement with the model-dependent analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]