Blue Straggler Stars and Open Clusters

  • Lee, Hyun-Uk (Department of Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyungpook National University) ;
  • Chang, Heon-Young (Department of Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyungpook National University)
  • Published : 2015.10.15

Abstract

Blue Straggler Stars (BSSs), kind of unusual main sequence stars, are the brighter and bluer stars than the main sequence turn off (MSTS) stars in coeval clusters. Since the first detection in globular clusters (GCs), BSSs have been shown to reveal an anti-correlation between the luminosity of their host star cluster and the number of BSSs in the cluster. Further, conclusions based on this result can be expanded to the open clusters. BSSs seem to play an important role in GCs according to the relation between the dynamical time scale of GCs and the number of BSSs along the cluster radius. This relation, however, remains to be verified in open clusters, In this study, we divide open clusters by the existence of BSSs into two groups. Then we compare parameters between these groups to specify the role of BSSs in open clusters.

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