2018AJ....156..165C

Main-sequence turnoff ages in young open clusters are complicated by turnoffs that are sparse, have high binarity fractions, can be affected by differential reddening, and typically include a number of peculiar stars. Furthermore, stellar rotation can have a significant effect on a star's photometry and evolutionary timescale. In this paper we analyze in 12 nearby open clusters, ranging in age from 50 to 350 Myr, how broadband UBV color-color relations can be used to identify turnoff stars that are Be stars, blue stragglers, certain types of binaries, or those affected by differential reddening. This UBV color-color analysis also directly measures a cluster's E(B - V) and estimates its [Fe/H]. The turnoff stars unaffected by these peculiarities create a narrower and more clearly defined cluster turnoff. Using four common isochronal models, two of which consider rotation, we fit cluster parameters using these selected turnoff stars and the main sequence. Comparisons of the photometrically fit cluster distances to those based on parallaxes from Gaia data release 2 find that they are consistent for all clusters. For older (>100 Myr) clusters, such as the Pleiades and the Hyades, comparisons to ages based on the lithium depletion boundary method find that these cleaned turnoff ages agree to within ∼10% for all four isochronal models. For younger clusters, however, only the Geneva models that consider rotation fit turnoff ages consistent with lithium-based ages, while the ages based on non-rotating isochrones quickly diverge to become 30%-80% younger. This illustrates the importance of rotation in deriving ages in the youngest (<100 Myr) clusters.