Pre-main-sequence stars older than 8 Myr in the Eagle nebula

Attention is given to a population of 110 stars in the NGC 6611 cluster of the Eagle nebula that have prominent near-infrared excess and optical colours typical of pre-main-sequence (PMS) stars older than 8 Myr. At least half of those for which spectroscopy exists have a H alpha emission line profile revealing active accretion. In principle, the V - I colours of all these stars would be consistent with those of young PMS objects (< 1 Myr) whose radiation is heavily obscured by a circumstellar disc seen at high inclination and in small part scattered towards the observer by the back side of the disc. However, using theoretical models it is shown here that objects of this type can only account for a few per cent of this population. In fact, the spatial distribution of these objects, their X-ray luminosities, their optical brightness, their positions in the colour-magnitude diagram and the weak Li absorption lines of the stars studied spectroscopically suggest that most of them are at least eight times older than the similar to 1 Myr-old PMS stars already known in this cluster and could be as old as similar to 30 Myr. This is the largest homogeneous sample to date of Galactic PMS stars considerably older than 8 Myr that are still actively accreting from a circumstellar disc and it allows us to set a lower limit of 7 per cent to the disc frequency at similar to 16 Myr in NGC 6611. These values imply a characteristic exponential lifetime of similar to 6 Myr for disc dissipation.