6533b7d7fe1ef96bd126908d

RESEARCH PRODUCT

The age evolution of Ca II emission in late type stars

subject

description

It has been widely demonstrated that chromospheric emission is dependent on rotation rate (Hartmann and Noyes, 1987, Catalano, 1990, for recent reviews). Since the rotation decays with time, the chromospheric activity of single main sequence stars is also dependent on age. Catalano and Marilli (1983) suggested that the chromospheric emission of solar mass stars decays exponentially with the square root of the time, as recently confirmed by Barry (1988). Magnetic activity depends also on the convection parameters, i.e. on the mass. Since the evolution of surface rotation is faster for lower mass stars (Catalano et al., 1988), the internal rotation distribution, and therefore the dynamo action, should change with time in a different way for different masses.In order to get insight into the evolution of dynamo action we have studied the CaII chromospheric emission as a function of mass and age. Here we present some preliminary results of observations of late type stars in young clusters and old moving groups.