Related papers: The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy from eclipsin…
We present an analysis of the dust and gas in Andromeda, using Herschel images sampling the entire far-infrared peak. We fit a modified-blackbody model to ~4000 quasi-independent pixels with spatial resolution of ~140pc and find that a…
One of the keys to understanding the universe is the proper measurement of the relation between the luminosity distance $d_L$ and the angular diameter distance $d_A$. In 1933 Etherington deduced from general relativity the reciprocity…
We report on the discovery and analysis of short-period (0.1 days $< P <$ 5 days), photometrically varying binary stars around and below the main-sequence turnoff of the globular clusters (GCs) NGC 3201, M10, & M12. These eclipsing binaries…
DIRECT is a project to obtain directly the distances to two Local Group galaxies, M31 and M33, which occupy a crucial position near the bottom of the cosmological distance ladder. As the first step of the DIRECT project we have searched for…
Full tests to stellar models below 1 Msun have been hindered until now by the scarce number of precise measurements of the stars' most fundamental parameters: their masses and radii. With the current observational techniques, the required…
We present a new 12CO(J=1-0)-line survey of the Andromeda galaxy, M31, covering the bright disk with the highest resolution to date (85 pc along the major axis), observed On-the-Fly (in italics) with the IRAM 30-m telescope. We discuss the…
We use deep wide-field photometry from the Large Binocular Camera to study the stellar and structural properties of the recently discovered Andromeda X and Andromeda XVII (And X and And XVII) dwarf galaxies. Using the mean apparent…
In this thesis, we examine the interplay of interstellar dust and gas in the Andromeda galaxy (M31). In Chapter 2, we use $^{12}$CO CARMA observations of M31 and dust mass surface density measurements from the Bayesian algorithm PPMAP to…
The cosmic proper distance $d_P$ is a fundamental distance in the Universe. Unlike the luminosity and angular diameter distances, which correspond to the angular size, the proper distance is the length of light path from the source to…
We perform a cosmographic analysis using several cosmological observables such as the luminosity distance moduli, the volume distance, the angular diameter distance and the Hubble parameter. These quantities are determined using different…
Our proximity and external vantage point make M31 an ideal testbed for understanding the structure of spiral galaxies. The Andromeda Optical and Infrared Disk Survey (ANDROIDS) has mapped M31's bulge and disk out to R=40 kpc in $ugriJK_s$…
We revisit the estimation of the combined mass of the Milky Way and Andromeda (M31), which dominate the mass of the Local Group. We make use of an ensemble of 30,190 halo pairs from the Small MultiDark simulation, assuming a $\Lambda$CDM…
In this paper, we derive the fundamental properties of 1SWASPJ011351.29+314909.7 (J0113+31), a metal-poor (-0.40 +/- 0.04 dex), eclipsing binary in an eccentric orbit (~0.3) with an orbital period of ~14.277 d. Eclipsing M dwarfs orbiting…
The Andromeda galaxy (M31) provides a new line of sight for Galactic MACHO studies and also a signature, near-far asymmetry, which may establish the existence of MACHOs in the M31 halo. We outline the principles behind the so-called…
Stellar fundamental properties (masses, radii, effective temperatures) can be extracted from observations of eclipsing binary systems with remarkable precision, often better than 2%. Such precise measurements afford us the opportunity to…
The galaxy distributions along the line-of-sight are significantly contaminated by the uncertainty on redshift measurements obtained through multiband photometry, which makes it difficult to get cosmic distance information measured from…
The extragalactic distance scale is perhaps the most important application of stellar distance indicators. Among these, classical Cepheids are high-accuracy standard candles that support a $1.4\%$ measurement of Hubble's constant, $H_0$.…
Accurate distance determination to astrophysical objects is essential for the understanding of their intrinsic brightness and size. The distance to SN 1987A has been previously measured by the expanding photosphere method, and by using the…
The absolute magnitude M* of the peak of the globular cluster luminosity function (GCLF), approximated by a Gaussian, can be calibrated independently in the Galaxy and M 31 through RR Lyr stars and Cepheids, respectively. They yield, in…
We report the discovery of a new dwarf galaxy, Andromeda XXVIII, using data from the recently-released SDSS DR8. The galaxy is a likely satellite of Andromeda, and, at a separation of $365^{+17}_{-1}$ kpc, would be one of the most distant…