Poster Abstract
Star clusters are large agglomerations of stars which can be categorised into 2 main types: open clusters, loosely bound collections of young stars, and globular clusters, which are tightly gravitationally bound and typically contain older stars. Investigating star clusters provides us with a deeper insight into stellar formation and evolution, a field of research that is still actively changing and growing.
This poster summarises the research I conducted into the open cluster M37 and its properties. Many characteristics of a star cluster can be deduced by obtaining data via photometric analysis methods and using this to construct colour-magnitude diagrams. From these figures, we can extract precise information about the cluster such as its age and the types of star within the cluster.
Plain text summary
The first page of my poster includes 2 images of the star cluster M37: one taken by myself, used for my analysis, and one from a different source. There is a third picture on the first page of the telescope and imaging system used to capture the image of M37. The text on the first page of the poster summarises what star clusters are (see abstract) and how I imaged them. The second page of the poster describes the process of producing the colour magnitude diagram, and plotting it against a set of isochrones. On the second page, there are 3 graphs: the first is a graph of proper motion in right ascension vs declination. The plot resembles the positions of the stars within the cluster. The second graph is a colour magnitude diagram, showing a trend of points from the top left corner of the graph slowly curving down towards the bottom right corner. The third diagram is the same colour magnitude diagram, this time overlaid on a set of isochrones. The colour magnitude diagram and the isochrones meet. This is how the age of the cluster is determined. As the colour magnitude diagram sits on the sixth isochrone, we can assume the cluster to be 6 million years old.
