Related papers: Pseudomagnitude Distances: Application to the Plei…
Stars in open clusters are powerful probes of the intervening Galactic magnetic field, via background starlight polarimetry, because they provide constraints on the magnetic field distances. We use 2MASS photometric data for a sample of 31…
We present a reanalysis of the light curves of HD 23642, a detached eclipsing binary star in the Pleiades open cluster, with emphasis on a detailed error analysis. We compare the masses and radii of the two stars to predictions of stellar…
The accuracy of stellar distances inferred purely from parallaxes degrades rapidly with distance. Proper motion measurements, when combined with some idea of typical velocities, provide independent information on stellar distances. Here I…
We used Gaia DR2 data in order to estimate parameters of the Pleiades. With the data on stars with m_G<=18 mag, we constructed the density maps and profile, luminosity and mass functions, determined the cluster radius, 10.9+/-0.3 deg…
Cepheids are the pillar of the extragalactic distance scale, but their reach in distance is not sufficient to calibrate H_0. Yet HST has provided Cepheid distances to eight galaxies which have produced SNe Ia. The latter are used as nearly…
A new tool is proposed for finding out the completeness limit in apparent magnitude of a magnitude-redshift sample. The technique, closely related to the statistical test proposed by Efron & Petrosian (1992), presents a real improvement…
The distance to the centroid of the M31 globular cluster system is determined by fitting theoretical isochrones to the observed red-giant branches of fourteen globular clusters in M31. The mean true distance modulus of the M31 globular…
Cool spots on the surface of magnetically-active stars modulate their observed brightnesses and temperatures, thereby affecting the stellar locus on the H-R diagram. Recent high precision space-based photometric surveys reveal the…
The parallax of pulsation, and its implementations such as the Baade-Wesselink method and the infrared surface bright- ness technique, is an elegant method to determine distances of pulsating stars in a quasi-geometrical way. However, these…
In these notes we generalize the notion of a (pseudo) metric measuring the distance of two points, to a (pseudo) n-metric which assigns a value to a tuple of n points. We present two principles of constructing pseudo n-metrics. The first…
Combined with X-ray imaging and spectral data, observations of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) can be used to determine direct distances to galaxy clusters. These distances are independent of the extragalactic distance ladder and do not…
Obtaining robust galaxy number counts is crucial for understanding galaxy evolution, and submillimetre counts in particular have proven valuable for revising subgrid physics models in cosmological simulations. In confusion-limited surveys,…
The influence of various factors on the statistical properties of the Galactic center distance ($R_0$) estimate obtained by solving the general problem of determining the geometric parameters of a Galactic spiral arm from its segment with…
We present relation of the mean I-band brightness of red clump stars on metallicity. Red clump stars were proposed to be a very attractive standard candle for distance determination. The calibration is based on 284 nearby red giant stars…
On the basis of the best available member list and duplicity information, we have studied the radial distribution of 270 stars and multiple systems earlier than K0 in the Pleiades. Five new long period spectroscopic binaries have been…
Anomalous Cepheids are radially pulsating stars observed in dwarf galaxies, the Galactic bulge and halo, and globular clusters. Similarly to other radially pulsating stars, they can be used as distance indicators through their…
Asteroseismology has been extremely successful in determining the properties of stars in different evolutionary stages with a remarkable level of precision. However, to fully exploit its potential, robust methods for estimating stellar…
Distance measurements to molecular clouds are important, but are often made separately for each cloud of interest, employing very different different data and techniques. We present a large, homogeneous catalog of distances to molecular…
We take a fresh look at the determination of distances and velocities of neutron stars. The conversion of a parallax measurement into a distance, or distance probability distribution, has led to a debate quite similar to the one involving…
We show that for high-magnification (Amax > 100) microlensing events, accurate microlens parallaxes can be obtained from three or fewer photometric measurements from a small telescope on a satellite in solar orbit at ~1 AU from Earth. This…