| Name: | Khushboo Kunwar Rao |
| Affiliation: | Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Pilani Campus |
| Conference ID : | ASI2022_47 |
| Title : | Characterization of stellar populations of Melotte 66 using Swift/UVOT |
| Authors : | Khushboo K. Rao (Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani), Kaushar Vaidya (Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani), Manan Agarwal (Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani), Anju Panthi (Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani) |
| Abstract Type: | Poster |
| Abstract Category : | Stars, ISM and Galaxy |
| Abstract : | For more than a decade, spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of stars constructed using multi-wavelength data ranging from UV to IR, have helped us constrain the formation mechanisms of blue straggler stars (BSS). Multiwavelength SEDs have also been instrumental in discovering unresolved hot companions in these systems, in addition to characterizing other hot stellar populations of star clusters. Melotte 66 is a 3.4 Gyr old open cluster located at ~4800 pc. We identify members of the cluster by applying the ML-MOC algorithm on Gaia-eDR3 data. We find 1162 members, 13 BSS, and one white dwarf (WD) at G ~18.6 mag in this cluster based on our membership identification. Using the Swift/UVOT data in combination with other archival data in optical and IR, we generate SEDs for 11 BSS, one WD, one red clump star, and 18 main-sequence turn-off stars. The identified WD in this cluster has a temperature of 19250 K. We discover a hot companion in one BSS, that is likely a low-mass WD. The hot companion has a temperature of ~38000 K, a luminosity of ~2.99 L☉, a radius of ~0.039 R☉, and a mass of ~0.4 M☉. We also present the fundamental properties of various populations based on their fitted SED. |