Related papers: New NIR light-curve templates for classical Cephei…

The technique of line depth ratios (LDR) is one of the methods to determine the effective temperature of a star. They are crucial in the spectroscopic studies of variable stars like Cepheids since no simultaneous photometry is usually…

Classical Cepheids are primary distance indicators and a crucial stepping stone to determining the present-day Hubble constant Ho to the precision and accuracy required to constrain apparent deviations from the LCDM Concordance Cosmological…

Recent work on the luminosities of type II Cepheids (CephIIs) and RR Lyrae variables is reviewed.In the near infrared (JHKs) the CephIIs in globular clusters show a narrow, linear, period-luminosity relation over their whole period range…

New X-ray (XMM-Newton) and JHKs (OMM) observations for members of the star cluster Alessi 95, which Turner et al.(2012) discovered hosts the classical Cepheid SU Cas, were used in tandem with UCAC3 (proper motion) and 2MASS observations to…

Calibration of the period-luminosity relation (PLR) for Cepheids has always been one of the biggest goals of stellar astronomy. Among a considerable number of different approaches, the Baade-Becker-Wesselink (BBW) method stands in the…

We present high-definition observations with the James Webb Space Telescope of >1000 Cepheids in a geometric anchor of the distance ladder, NGC4258, and in 5 hosts of 8 SNe~Ia, a far greater sample than previous studies with JWST. These…

Classical Cepheids are the most popular distance indicators and tracers of young stellar populations. The key advantage is that they are bright and they can be easily identified in Local Group and Local Volume galaxies. Their evolutionary…

Cepheids have long been used as standard candles to determine distances around the Milky Way and to nearby galaxies. A discrepancy still remains for Hubble Constant determinations using Cepheids vs. the cosmic microwave background or…

We present theoretical period - magnitude relationships for Cepheids in different filters for fundamental and first overtone pulsators, completing the work by Alibert et al. (1999). The results are provided for different metallicities…

Near-infrared (NIR) detectors -- which use non-destructive readouts to measure time-series counts-per-pixel -- play a crucial role in modern astrophysics. Standard NIR flux extraction techniques were developed for space-based observations…

We compare two methods for deriving distances to early-type galaxies: fundamental plane (FP) and surface brightness fluctuations (SBF) distances for 170 galaxies. A third set of distances is provided by predictions derived from the density…

The VISTA Magellanic Cloud (VMC, PI M.R. Cioni) survey is collecting deep Ks-band time-series photometry of the pulsating variable stars hosted by the system formed by the two Magellanic Clouds (MCs) and the "bridge" connecting them. In…

We report the result of our near-infrared observations (JHKs) for type II Cepheids (including possible RV Tau stars) in galactic globular clusters. We detected variations of 46 variables in 26 clusters (10 new discoveries in seven clusters)…

The IR emission of dust heated by stars provides critical information for galaxy evolution studies. Unfortunately, observations are often limited to the MIR, making templates a necessity. Previously published templates were based on small…

The B-W method is used to determine the distance of Cepheids and consists in combining the angular size variations of the star, as derived from infrared surface-brightness relations or interferometry, with its linear size variation, as…

Infrared and optical absolute magnitudes are derived for the type II Cepheids kappa Pav and VY Pyx from revised Hipparcos parallaxes and for kappa Pav, V553 Cen and SW Tau from pulsation parallaxes. Phase-corrected JHK mags are given for…

Context: The effective temperature is a key parameter governing the properties of a star. For stellar chemistry, it has the strongest impact on the accuracy of the abundances derived. Since Cepheids are pulsating stars, determining their…

The advantages of a near-infrared variant of the Barnes-Evans method for estimating distances to Cepheid variables are described and quantified. A surface brightness-color relation for $K$ photometry and the $(V-K)_0$ color index is…

We report the discovery of 20 1H/2H and 7 F/1H beat Cepheids in the SMC by the MACHO Project. We utilize the 20 1H/2H stars to determine lightcurve shape for the SMC second-overtone (2H) mode of Cepheid pulsation. We predict, similar to the…

We focus on empirically measure the p-factor of a homogeneous sample of 29 LMC and 10 SMC Cepheids for which an accurate average LMC/SMC distance were estimated from eclipsing binary systems. We used the SPIPS algorithm, which is an…