Emission‐line stars in young open clusters are identified to study their properties, as a function of age, spectral type and evolutionary state. 207 open star clusters were observed using the slitless spectroscopy method and 157 emission stars were identified in 42 clusters. We have found 54 new emission‐line stars in 24 open clusters, out of which 19 clusters are found to house emission stars for the first time. About 20 per cent clusters harbour emission stars. The fraction of clusters housing emission stars is maximum in both the 0–10 and 20–30 Myr age bin (∼40 per cent each). Most of the emission stars in our survey belong to Classical Be class (∼92 per cent) while a few are Herbig Be stars (∼6 per cent) and Herbig Ae stars (∼2 per cent). The youngest clusters to have Classical Be stars are IC 1590, NGC 637 and 1624 (all 4 Myr old) while NGC 6756 (125–150 Myr) is the oldest cluster to have Classical Be stars. The Classical Be stars are located all along the main sequence (MS) in the optical colour–magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of clusters of all ages, which indicates that the Be phenomenon is unlikely due to core contraction near the turn‐off. The distribution of Classical Be stars as a function of spectral type shows peaks at B1–B2 and B6–B7 spectral types. The Be star fraction [N(Be)/N(B+Be)] is found to be less than 10 per cent for most of the clusters and NGC 2345 is found to have the largest fraction (∼26 per cent). Our results indicate there could be two mechanisms responsible for the Classical Be phenomenon. Some are born Classical Be stars (fast rotators), as indicated by their presence in clusters younger than 10 Myr. Some stars evolve to Classical Be stars, within the MS lifetime, as indicated by the enhancement in the fraction of clusters with Classical Be stars in the 20–30 Myr age bin.

Correlations between the occurrence rate of exoplanets and their host star properties provide important clues about the planet formation processes. We studied the dependence of the observed properties of exoplanets (radius, mass, and orbital period) as a function of their host star metallicity. We analyzed the planetary radii and orbital periods of over 2800 Kepler candidates from the latest Kepler data release DR25 (Q1-Q17) with revised planetary radii based on Gaia DR2 as a function of host star metallicity (from the Q1-Q17 (DR25) stellar and planet catalog). With a much larger sample and improved radius measurements, we are able to reconfirm previous results in the literature. We show that the average metallicity of the host star increases as the radius of the planet increases. We demonstrate this by first calculating the average host star metallicity for different radius bins and then supplementing these results by calculating the occurrence rate as a function of planetary radius and host star metallicity. We find a similar trend between host star metallicity and planet mass: the average host star metallicity increases with increasing planet mass. This trend, however, reverses for masses > 4.0 M J : host star metallicity drops with increasing planetary mass. We further examined the correlation between the host star metallicity and the orbital period of the planet. We find that for planets with orbital periods less than 10 days, the average metallicity of the host star is higher than that for planets with periods greater than 10 days.

The present study makes use of the unprecedented capability of the Gaia mission to obtain the stellar parameters such as distance, age, and mass of HAeBe stars. The accuracy of Gaia DR2 astrometry is demonstrated from the comparison of the Gaia DR2 distances of 131 HAeBe stars with the previously estimated values from the literature. This is one of the initial studies to estimate the age and mass of a confirmed sample of HAeBe stars using both the photometry and distance from the Gaia mission. Mass accretion rates are calculated from Hα line flux measurements of 106 HAeBe stars. Since we used distances and the stellar masses derived from the Gaia DR2 data in the calculation of mass accretion rate, our estimates are more accurate than previous studies. The mass accretion rate is found to decay exponentially with age, from which we estimated a disk dissipation timescale of 1.9 ± 0.1 Myr. Mass accretion rate and stellar mass exhibits a power law relation of the form,Ṁ acc ∝ M 2.8±0.2 * . From the distinct distribution in the values of the infrared spectral index, n 2−4.6 , we suggest the possibility of difference in the disk structure between Herbig Be and Herbig Ae stars.

We present a photometric and spectroscopic study of the young open cluster NGC 7419, which is known to host a large number of classical Be stars for reasons not well understood. Based on CCD photometric observations of 327 stars in UBV passbands, we estimated the cluster parameters as, reddening [E(B − V )] = 1.65 ± 0.15 mag and distance = 2900 ± 400 pc. The turn-off age of the cluster was estimated as 25 ± 5 Myr using isochrone fits. UBV data of the stars were combined with the JHK data from Two-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) and were used to create the near-infrared (NIR) (J − H) versus (H − K) colour-colour diagram. A large fraction of stars (42 per cent) was found to have NIR excess and their location in the diagram was used to identify them as intermediate mass pre-main-sequence (MS) stars. The isochrone fits to pre-MS stars in the optical colour-magnitude diagram showed that the turn-on age of the cluster is 0.3-3 Myr. This indicates that there has been a recent episode of star formation in the vicinity of the cluster.Slitless spectra were used to identify 27 stars which showed Hα in emission in the field of the cluster, of which six are new identifications. All these stars were found to show NIR excess and are located closer to the region populated by Herbig Ae/Be stars in the (J − H) versus (H − K) diagram. Slit spectra of 25 stars were obtained in the region 3700-9000 Å. The spectral features were found to be very similar to those of Herbig Be stars. These stars were found to be more reddened than the main-sequence stars by 0.4 mag, on an average. Thus, the emission-line stars found in this cluster are more similar to the Herbig Be-type stars where the circumstellar material is the remnant of the accretion disc. We conclude that the second episode of star formation has led to the formation of a large number of Herbig Be stars as well as intermediate mass pre-MS stars in the field of NGC 7419, thus explaining the presence of emission-line stars in this cluster. This could be one of the young open clusters with the largest number of Herbig Be stars.