Related papers: Asymptotic Giant Branch Variables as Extragalactic…
Gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters can create extreme magnification near the cluster caustics, thereby enabling detection of individual luminous stars in high-redshift background galaxies. Those stars can include non-explosive…
We present here a study of the Infrared properties of Asymptotic Giant Branch stars (hereafter AGB) based on existing databases, mainly from space-borne experiments. Preliminary results about C and S stars are discussed, focusing on the…
Variable OH/IR stars are Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars with an optically thick circumstellar envelope that emit strong OH 1612 MHz emission. They are commonly observed throughout the Galaxy but also in the LMC and SMC. Hence, the…
Our understanding of large amplitude pulsating stars and their status in stellar evolution is briefly reviewed. The paper then describes the near-infrared light curves of various asymptotic giant branch stars, concentrating on possible…
Blue supergiant stars can be exceptionally bright objects in the optical, making them prime targets for the determination of extragalactic distances. I describe how their photometric and spectroscopic properties can be calibrated to provide…
Increasing samples of pulsating variable stars populating the classical instability strip from the horizontal branch to a few magnitudes brighter are being found in several Local Group galaxies, irrespective of the galaxy morphological…
We present new modelling of the spectrophotometric properties of intermediate age stellar populations in the near-infrared (NIR). We take into account the evolutionary and spectroscopic properties of the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars…
The upper Asymptotic Giant Branch is populated with oxygen rich and carbon rich Long Period Variables. These stars are essential contributors to the near-IR light of intermediate age stellar populations. Individual observed spectra of LPVs…
In various disordered systems or non-equilibrium dynamical models, the large deviations of some observables have been found to display different scalings for rare values bigger or smaller than the typical value. In the present paper, we…
We use distance measurements in the nearby universe to carry out new tests of gravity, surpassing other astrophysical tests by over two orders of magnitude for chameleon theories. The three nearby distance indicators -- cepheids, tip of the…
A summary is given of the calibration of the Cepheid scale required in the derivation of distances from observations at V and I, as in the HST work on extragalactic Cepheids. There is some evidence that a small metallicity correction may be…
We present a large set of theoretical isochrones, whose distinctive features mostly reside on the greatly improved treatment of the thermally pulsing asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) phase. Essentially, we have coupled the TP-AGB tracks…
Classical Cepheid and RR Lyrae variables are radially pulsating stars that trace young and old-age stellar populations, respectively. These classical pulsating stars are the most sensitive probes for the precision stellar astrophysics and…
With contemporary infrared spectroscopic surveys like APOGEE, red-giant stars can be observed to distances and extinctions at which Gaia parallaxes are not highly informative. Yet the combination of effective temperature, surface gravity,…
Twenty six Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) variables are identified in the Local Group galaxy Leo I. These include 7 Mira and 5 semi-regular variables for which periods, amplitudes and mean magnitudes are determined. The large range of…
The Magellanic Clouds, especially the Large Magellanic Cloud, are places where multiple distance indicators can be compared with each other in a straight-forward manner at considerable precision. We here review the distances derived from…
The local determination of the Hubble Constant sits at a crossroad. Current estimates of the local expansion rate of the Universe differ by about 1.7-sigma, derived from the Cepheid and TRGB based calibrations, applied to type Ia…
This paper introduces a statistical treatment to use Cepheid variable stars as distance indicators. The expansion rate of the Universe is also studied here through deriving the value of the Hubble constant H0. A Gaussian function…
Distance measurements beyond geometrical and semi-geometrical methods, rely mainly on standard candles. As the name suggests, these objects have known luminosities by virtue of their intrinsic proprieties and play a major role in our…
Type II Cepheids are a class of pulsating variable stars that play a critical role in our understanding of stellar evolution, distance measurement and tracing the structure and kinematics of old stars in nearby galaxies. This review…