Benchmarking MESA isochrones with the Hyades

The small observational uncertainties in parallax and photometry of EDR3 result in a tightly defined stellar sequence, which is ideal for the testing and calibration of theoretical stellar evolutionary tracks and isochrones. We benchmark the solar-scaled MESA evolutionary models against the single star sequence.

We find that the non-rotating MESA models for [Fe/H]=+0.25 provide a good fit for stars with masses above 0.85, and very low mass stars below 0.25M_{sun}_. For stars with masses between 0.25 and 0.85M_{sun}_the models systematically under predict the observed stellar luminosity. One potential limitation of the models for partially convective stars more massive than 0.35M_{sun}_is the prescription of (superadiabatic) convection with the mixing-length theory parameter {alpha}_ML_ tuned to match the Solar model.