Precise masses, radii, and luminosities from eclipsing binaries and colour-magnitude diagrams for open clusters are classic tools in empirical tests of stellar evolution models. We review the accuracy and completeness required for such data to discriminate between current models and describe some recent. results with implications for convection theory.

From the uvby, H β photometry of intermediate population II F-stars in the catalogue of Olsen (1983), we derived age-metallicity relations for these stars, using Hejlesen's (1980) isochrone. The derived age-metallicity relations well coincide with the theoretical predictions by the unclosed two-zone model of Lee and Ann (1981). There are few extremely metal poor F-stars in the vicinity of the Sun, and it is very likely that the initial rapid metal enrichment in the galactic disk might have been processed through the fast collapse of the disk at the very early epoch.

A summary is presented of what is currently known about the surface temperatures of accreting white dwarfs (WDs) detected in non-magnetic and magnetic cataclysmic variables (CVs) based upon synthetic spectral analyses of far ultraviolet data. A special focus is placed on WD temperatures above and below the CV period gap as a function of the orbital period, Porb. The principal uncertainty of the temperatures for the CV WDs in the Teff - Porb distribution, besides the distance to the CV, is the mass of the WD. Only in eclipsing CV systems, an area of eclipsing binary studies, which was so central to Robert H. Koch’s career, is it possible to know CV WD masses with high precision.