Measurements of 500 Sun-like stars show that their properties differ from those predicted by stellar population models.

NASA's Kepler mission is providing basic asteroseismic data for hundreds of stars. One of the more common ways of determining stellar characteristics from these data is by so-called "grid based" modelling. We have made a detailed study of grid-based analysis techniques to study the errors (and error-correlations) involved. As had been reported earlier, we find that it is relatively easy to get very precise values of stellar radii using grid-based techniques. However, we find that there are small, but significant, biases that can result because of the grid of models used. The biases can be minimized if metallicity is known. Masses cannot be determined as precisely as the radii, and suffer from larger systematic effects. We also find that the errors in mass and radius are correlated. A positive consequence of this correlation is that log g can be determined both precisely and accurately with almost no systematic biases. Radii and log g can be determined with almost no model dependence to within 5% for realistic estimates of errors in asteroseismic and conventional observations. Errors in mass can be somewhat higher unless accurate metallicity estimates are available. Age estimates of individual stars are the most model dependent. The errors are larger too. However, we find that for star-clusters, it is possible to get a relatively precise age if one assumes that all stars in a given cluster have the same age.

We present initial results on some of the properties of open clusters NGC 6791 and NGC 6819 derived from asteroseismic data obtained by NASA's Kepler mission. In addition to estimating the mass, radius, and log g of stars on the red giant branch (RGB) of these clusters, we estimate the distance to the clusters and their ages. Our model-independent estimate of the distance modulus of NGC 6791 is (m − M ) 0 = 13.11 ± 0.06. We find (m − M ) 0 = 11.85 ± 0.05 for NGC 6819. The average mass of stars on the RGB of NGC 6791 is 1.20 ± 0.01 M , while that of NGC 6819 is 1.68 ± 0.03 M . It should be noted that we do not have data that cover the entire RGB and the actual mass will be somewhat lower. We have determined model-dependent estimates of ages of these clusters. We find ages between 6.8 and 8.6 Gyr for NGC 6791, however, most sets of models give ages around 7 Gyr. We obtain ages between 2 and 2.4 Gyr for NGC 6819.