stardate

Checkout the documentation.

stardate currently only works with python3.

stardate is a tool for measuring precise stellar ages. it combines isochrone fitting with gyrochronology (rotation-based ages) to increase the precision of stellar ages on the main sequence. the best possible ages provided by stardate will be for stars with rotation periods, although ages can be predicted for stars without rotation periods too. if you don't have rotation periods for any of your stars, you might consider using isochrones as stardate is simply an extension to isochrones that incorporates gyrochronology. stardate reverts back to isochrones when no rotation period is provided.

If you would like to contribute to this project, feel free to raise issues or submit pull requests from the github repo.

Installation

Currently the best way to install stardate is from github.

git clone https://github.com/RuthAngus/stardate.git
cd stardate
python setup.py install

Dependencies

The dependencies of stardate are NumPy, pandas, h5py, numba, emcee3, tqdm and isochrones.

These can be installed using pip:

pip install numpy pandas h5py numba "emcee==3.0rc2" tqdm isochrones

You can check out the isochrones documentation if you run into difficulties installing that.

Example usage

import stardate as sd

# Create a dictionary of observables
iso_params = {"teff": (4386, 50),     # Teff with uncertainty.
              "logg": (4.66, .05),    # logg with uncertainty.
              "feh": (0.0, .02),      # Metallicity with uncertainty.
              "parallax": (1.48, .1),  # Parallax in milliarcseconds.
              "maxAV": .1}            # Maximum extinction

prot, prot_err = 29, 3

# Set up the star object.
star = sd.Star(iso_params, prot=prot, prot_err=prot_err)  # Here's where you add a rotation period

# Run the MCMC
star.fit(max_n=1000)

# max_n is the maximum number of MCMC samples. I recommend setting this
# much higher when running for real, or using the default value of 100000.

# Print the median age with the 16th and 84th percentile uncertainties.
age, errm, errp, samples = star.age_results()
print("stellar age = {0:.2f} + {1:.2f} - {2:.2f}".format(age, errp, errm))

>> stellar age = 2.97 + 0.55 - 0.60

If you want to just use a simple gyrochronology model without running MCMC, you can predict a stellar age from a rotation period like this:

import numpy as np
from stardate.lhf import age_model

bprp = .82  # Gaia BP - RP color.
log10_period = np.log10(26)
log10_age_yrs = age_model(log10_period, bprp)
print((10**log10_age_yrs)*1e-9, "Gyr")
>> 4.565055357152765 Gyr

Or a rotation period from an age like this:

from stardate.lhf import gyro_model_praesepe

bprp = .82  # Gaia BP - RP color.
log10_age_yrs = np.log10(4.56*1e9)
log10_period = gyro_model_praesepe(log10_age_yrs, bprp)
print(10**log10_period, "days")
>> 25.98136488222407 days

BUT be aware that these simple relations are only applicable to FGK and early M dwarfs on the main sequence, older than a few hundred Myrs. If you're not sure if gyrochronology is applicable to your star, want the best age possible, or would like proper uncertainty estimates, I recommend using the full MCMC approach.