Related papers: Binary Cepheids from optical interferometry
The two nearby galaxies, M31 and M33, are stepping stones for most of our current efforts to understand the evolving universe at large scales. We are undertaking a long term project, called DIRECT, to improve the direct distance estimate to…
Long-period variables are bright, evolved red giant stars showing periodic photometric changes due to stellar pulsation. They follow one or more period-luminosity and period-age relations, which make them highly promising distance…
Recent progress on Baade-Wesselink (BW)-type techniques to determine the distances to classical Cepheids is reviewed. Particular emphasis is placed on the near-infrared surface-brightness (IRSB) version of the BW method. Its most recent…
Classical Cepheid variable stars are high-sensitivity probes of stellar evolution and fundamental tracers of cosmic distances. While rotational mixing significantly affects the evolution of Cepheid progenitors (intermediate-mass stars), the…
Planetary Nebulae represent a powerful window into the evolution of low-intermediate mass stars that have undergone extensive mass-loss. The nebula manifests itself in an extremely wide variety of shapes, but exactly how the mass lost is…
Several planet-search groups have acquired a great deal of data in the form of time-series spectra of several hundred nearby stars with time baselines of over a decade. While binary star detections are generally not the goal of these…
Type II Cepheids (T2Ceps), alongside RR Lyrae stars, serve as important distance indicators for old population II stars due to their period-luminosity (PL) relations. However, studies of these relations in the Sloan photometric system are…
We demonstrate that microlensing can be used for detecting planets in binary stellar systems. This is possible because in the geometry of planetary binary systems where the planet orbits one of the binary component and the other binary star…
Binary stars are crucial laboratories for stellar physics, so have been photometric targets for space missions beginning with the very first orbiting telescope (OAO-2) launched in 1968. This review traces the binary stars observed and the…
V1022 Cas has been known as a spectroscopic binary for a century. It was found to be eclipsing based on photometry from the Hipparcos satellite, and an astrometric orbit was recently obtained from near-infrared interferometry. We present…
Using our interferometric observations of seven classical Cepheids reported in Kervella et al. (2003, Paper I), complemented by previously existing measurements, we derive new calibrations of the Cepheids Period-Radius (P-R) and…
Large-amplitude asymptotic giant branch variables potentially rival Cepheid variables as fundamental calibrators of the distance scale, particularly if observations are made in the infrared, or where there is substantial interstellar…
The study of very short-period contact binaries provides an important laboratory in which the most important and problematic astrophysical processes of stellar evolution take place. Short-period contact systems, such as CC Com are…
More than 340 non-eclipsing binaries of A-F stars as primaries at intermediate periods (100-1000 d) were newly found by uninterrupted photometry with ultra high-precision taken over 4 yr by Kepler space mission via the phase modulation of…
We undertook a long term project, DIRECT, to obtain the direct distances to two important galaxies in the cosmological distance ladder -- M31 and M33, using detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) and Cepheids. While rare and difficult to…
Only a handful of binary central stars of planetary nebulae (PNe) are known today, due to the difficulty of detecting their companions. Preliminary results from radial velocity surveys, however, seem to indicate that binarity plays a…
We propose a possibility to improve the current precision measurements on compact binaries. When the orbital axis is almost perpendicular to our line of sight, a pulsar behind its companion can form two strong-lensing images. These images…
The mass-luminosity relation is a fundamental law of astrophysics. We have suggested that the currently used mass-luminosity relation is not correct for the M/M_sun > 2.7 range of mass since it was created using double-lined eclipsing…
A large number of high-dispersion spectra of classical Cepheids were obtained in the region of the CaII H+K spectral lines. The analysis of these spectra allowed us to detect the presence of a strong Balmer line, H$\epsilon$, for several…
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, $H_0$.…