Hipparcos and the Age of the Galactic Disc

Abstract

We have used the Hipparcos satellite colour magnitude diagram to determine the age of the Galactic disc. We first measure the metallicities of Hipparcos giants using DDO photometry (H{\o}g & Flynn 1997). With accurate metallicities and distances we compute the minimum age of the Galactic disc as $11\pm1$ Gyr using the colour of the reddest clump stars as a function of metallicity. In conjunction with the new ages derived for Globular Clusters using the same method (Jimenez et al 1996) we show that any delay between the formation of the halo and the disc was only 2-3 Gyr. Since disc galaxies may have been detected to redshifts as high as $z=3.15$ (Lu, Sargent and Barlow 1997) an age for our own Galactic disc of 11 Gyr favours open or non-zero $\Lambda$ cosmological models. We show that a Reimers mass-loss law is sufficient to explain the morphology of the red clump.