Benchmark ages for the Gaia benchmark stars

Understand

In the era of large-scale surveys of stars in the Milky Way, stellar ages are crucial for studying the evolution of the Galaxy.

• But determining ages of field stars is notoriously difficult; therefore, we attempt to determine benchmark ages for the extensively studied Gaia benchmark stars which can be used for validation purposes.
• By searching the literature for age estimates from different methods and deriving new ages based on Bayesian isochrone fitting, we are able to put reliable limits on the ages of 16 out of the 33 benchmark stars.
• The giants with well-defined ages are all young, and an expansion of the sample to include older giants with asteroseismic ages would be beneficial.