  We present time-series photometry of stars located in the extremely young
open cluster Berkeley 59. Using the 1.04 m telescope at ARIES, Nainital, we
have identified 42 variables in a field of 13'x13' around the cluster. The
probable members of the cluster are identified using (V, V-I) colour-magnitude
diagram and (J-H, H-K) colour-colour diagram. Thirty one variables are found to
be pre-main sequence stars associated with the cluster. The ages and masses of
pre-main sequence stars are derived from colour-magnitude diagram by fitting
theoretical models to the observed data points. The ages of the majority of the
probable pre-main sequence variable candidates range from 1 to 5 Myrs. The
masses of these pre-main sequence variable stars are found to be in the range
of ~0.3 to ~3.5 Msun and these could be T Tauri stars. The present statistics
reveal that about 90% T Tauri stars have periods < 15 days. The classical T
Tauri stars are found to have larger amplitude in comparison to the weak line T
Tauri stars. There is an indication that the amplitude decreases with increase
of the mass, which could be due to the dispersal of disk of relatively massive
stars.

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics