The Absolute Age of the Open Cluster NGC 6791 and Its Implications for Galactic Archaeology and Asteroseismic Calibration

We present a new absolute age determination for NGC 6791, one of the Milky Way’s oldest and most metal-rich open clusters. Its unusual properties make it an important probe of inner-disk evolution and asteroseismic calibration, but its age has remained difficult to determine because of coupled uncertainties in reddening, distance, photometry, and stellar-model physics. Gaia Data Release 3 photometry together with detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) in NGC 6791 are combined with 10,000 MC isochrone sets (marginalizing over uncertainties in composition, convective mixing processes, opacities, diffusion, nuclear reaction rates, distance modulus, and reddening) to determine the age of NGC 6791. For each isochrone we build a synthetic color–magnitude diagram (CMD) that matches the observed star count in the main-sequence turnoff and subgiant-branch window and injects empirical photometric scatter perpendicular to the ridgeline, enabling CMD comparisons without artificial-star tests. We assess CMD morphology using a bootstrap-calibrated 2D Kolmogorov–Smirnov statistic, and add an external check based on the nearest-point metric: a coeval DEB statistic in ( M , L ) space. These statistics are mapped to probability-density weights via bootstrap resampling and combined into a single isochrone weight. NGC 6791 is determined to have an age of 8.46 ± 0.66 Gyr, [Fe/H] = +0.280 ± 0.079, Y = 0.2968 ± 0.0158, ( m − M ) V = 13.333 ± 0.058, and E ( B − V ) = 0.183 ± 0.024. Our error budget shows no single dominant contributor, and highlights differences between open-cluster and globular-cluster age errors. Combined with its supersolar metallicity, our age estimate favors an inner-Galaxy origin for NGC 6791 and subsequent outward migration, provides a benchmark for asteroseismic calibration at high metallicity, and extends the absolute cluster age–metallicity relation to an old, metal-rich open cluster.