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Description
Ruprecht 147 is a hitherto unappreciated open cluster that holds great promise as a standard in fundamental stellar astrophysics. We have conducted a radial velocity survey of astrometric candidates with Lick, Palomar, and MMT observatories and have identified over 100 members, including 5 blue stragglers, 11 red giants, and 5 double-lined spectroscopic binaries (SB2s). We estimate the cluster metallicity from spectroscopic analysis, using Spectroscopy Made Easy (SME), and find it to be [M/H]=+0.07+/-0.03. We have obtained deep CFHT/MegaCam g'r'i'z' photometry and fit Padova isochrones to the (g'-i') and Two Micron All Sky Survey (J-K_S_) color-magnitude diagrams, using the {tau}^2^ maximum-likelihood procedure of Naylor, and an alternative method using two-dimensional cross-correlations developed in this work. We find best fits for Padova isochrones at age t=2.5+/-0.25Gyr, m-M=7.35+/-0.1, and A_V_=0.25+/-0.05, with additional uncertainty from the unresolved binary population and possibility of differential extinction across this large cluster. The inferred age is heavily dependent on our choice of stellar evolution model: fitting Dartmouth and PARSEC models yield age parameters of 3Gyr and 3.25Gyr, respectively. At ~300pc and ~3Gyr, Ruprecht 147 is by far the oldest nearby star cluster.
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