Old and New Tools for Understanding the Evolution of Stars in Clusters

Abstract

The uncertainties in the modelling of some important inputs of stellar evolution must be taken into account for a correct interpretation, both of the HR diagrams of individual stars, and of the integrated colors, of stellar clusters. After a short discussion of Globular Cluster ages, we focus on the problem of convection and discuss the parametrization of convection efficiency and overshooting.Convective efficiency affects the reliability of the giants colors, especially for high metallicity: age - metallicity relations found from integrated colors of clusters must be regarded with caution.Non-instantaneous mixing, both in the formal convective region and in the overshooting region must be taken into account: this is necessary to compute nucleosynthesis in ‘hot bottom burning’ envelopes, but it may also affect the color distribution in clump (core helium burning) stars, as shown here for the case of the LMC cluster NGC 1866.