Constraining Stellar Evolution in Young Open Clusters with NGTS
type: CreativeWork
description: Understanding stellar evolution is fundamental to astronomy, yet there remain significant gaps in our knowledge. Scientific progress requires testing our best explanations against observation, and open clusters act as key test sites for theories of stellar evolution. Observations of young open clusters enable theoretical models to be assessed at stages when stellar properties still reflect their initial conditions, and in regions of parameter space where constraints remain scarce. The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a multi-telescope, ground-based, wide-field photometric survey which is well-suited to studying these environments, and its observations are at the heart of this thesis, which presents my research in the field of early-stage stellar evolution as conducted during my PhD. As a member of the NGTS consortium and, specifically, of the team focusing on open clusters and star forming regions, I have used NGTS data to analyse stellar rotation in the Orion Star-forming Complex and to characterise a low-mass eclipsing binary (EB) in a triple-star system located in the Blanco 1 open cluster. By combining NGTS observations with additional photometry and spectroscopy, and by developing a novel method for extracting radial velocities of close binary (or higher-order) systems, I derived the fundamental parameters of the Blanco 1 EB. With masses and radii measured to a precision better than 1 and 2 per cent, respectively, the newly-identified EB, NGTS J0002-29, becomes a benchmark addition to the current list of 19 well-characterised, low-mass, sub-Gyr, stellar-mass EBs, which constitute some of the strongest observational tests of stellar evolution theory at low masses and young ages. Long-baseline observations of 30 square degrees of the Orion Complex provided simultaneous photometry of thousands of stars, leading to my study of stellar rotation. I analysed cluster membership using astrometry from Gaia DR3 and built a pipeline to process light curves, produci…
abstract: Understanding stellar evolution is fundamental to astronomy, yet there remain significant gaps in our knowledge. Scientific progress requires testing our best explanations against observation, and open clusters act as key test sites for theories of stellar evolution. Observations of young open clusters enable theoretical models to be assessed at stages when stellar properties still reflect their initial conditions, and in regions of parameter space where constraints remain scarce. The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a multi-telescope, ground-based, wide-field photometric survey which is well-suited to studying these environments, and its observations are at the heart of this thesis, which presents my research in the field of early-stage stellar evolution as conducted during my PhD. As a member of the NGTS consortium and, specifically, of the team focusing on open clusters and star forming regions, I have used NGTS data to analyse stellar rotation in the Orion Star-forming Complex and to characterise a low-mass eclipsing binary (EB) in a triple-star system located in the Blanco 1 open cluster. By combining NGTS observations with additional photometry and spectroscopy, and by developing a novel method for extracting radial velocities of close binary (or higher-order) systems, I derived the fundamental parameters of the Blanco 1 EB. With masses and radii measured to a precision better than 1 and 2 per cent, respectively, the newly-identified EB, NGTS J0002-29, becomes a benchmark addition to the current list of 19 well-characterised, low-mass, sub-Gyr, stellar-mass EBs, which constitute some of the strongest observational tests of stellar evolution theory at low masses and young ages. Long-baseline observations of 30 square degrees of the Orion Complex provided simultaneous photometry of thousands of stars, leading to my study of stellar rotation. I analysed cluster membership using astrometry from Gaia DR3 and built a pipeline to process light curves, produci…
author: Smith, Gareth
language: eng
keywords: astronomy, blanco 1, eclipsing binaries, open clusters, orion, pre-main sequence, stellar evolution, stellar rotation
license: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/2195edb8-b3ec-4221-ab58-c3fa7a709edd/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2022-12-21
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:23:56Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.99768