Related papers: Pseudomagnitude Distances: Application to the Plei…
We developed a code that estimates distances to stars using measured spectroscopic and photometric quantities. We employ a Bayesian approach to build the probability distribution function over stellar evolutionary models given these data,…
In this paper we present surveys of two open clusters using photometry and accurate astrometry from the SuperCOSMOS microdensitometer. These use plates taken by the Palomar Oschin Schmidt Telescope giving a wide field ($5^{\circ}$ from the…
We have used main-sequence fitting to calibrate the distances to the globular clusters NGC 6397, M5, NGC 288, M71 and 47 Tucanae, matching the cluster photometry against data for subdwarfs with precise Hipparcos parallax measurements and…
For precision cosmological studies it is important to know the local properties of the reference point from which we observe the Universe. Particularly for the determination of the Hubble constant with low-redshift distance indicators, the…
We present absolute parallaxes and proper motions for seven members of the Hyades open cluster, pre-selected to lie in the core of the cluster. Our data come from archival astrometric data from FGS 3, and newer data for 3 Hyads from FGS 1R,…
Classical Cepheids were the first stellar standard candles and have played a crucial role for astronomical distance measurements ever since the discovery of the Leavitt law (period-luminosity relation). Enormous improvements in distance…
Several standard candles have been tested and used to measure accurate extragalactic distances over the past decades. There have been discussions regarding the possibility of using Type-II Cepheids (T2Cs) as an alternative tool, but rarely…
This tutorial covers the use of absolute astrometry, in particular from the combination of the Hipparcos and Gaia missions, to identify faint companions to nearby stars and to measure the masses and orbits of those companions. Absolute…
We analyzed the Hipparcos astrometric observations of 47 stars that were discovered to harbor giant planets and 14 stars with brown-dwarf secondary candidates. The Hipparcos measurements were used together with the corresponding stellar…
(Abridged) We aim at identifying the least massive population of the solar metallicity, young (120 Myr), nearby (133.5 pc) Pleiades star cluster with the ultimate goal of understanding the physical properties of intermediate-age,…
In this paper, we derive a physical argument for the existence of Period-luminosity and period-luminosity-colour relations at maximum light. We examine in detail a sample of Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and compare the variance…
We present a new distance determination to the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds using the newly developed red clump stars method (Paczynski and Stanek 1998). This new, single-step, Hipparcos calibrated method seems to be one of the most…
This report provides an exploration of different distance measures that can be used with the $K$-means algorithm for cluster analysis. Specifically, we investigate the Mahalanobis distance, and critically assess any benefits it may have…
The knowledge of mass loss rates due to thermal winds in cool dwarfs is of crucial importance for modeling evolution of physical parameters of main sequence single and binary stars. Very few, sometimes contradictory, measurements of such…
Ten years ago our team completed the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project on the extragalactic distance scale. Cepheids were detected in some 25 galaxies and used to calibrate four secondary distance indicators that reach out into the…
This paper studies the properties of a new lower bound for the natural pseudo-distance. The natural pseudo-distance is a dissimilarity measure between shapes, where a shape is viewed as a topological space endowed with a real-valued…
We describe a method of determining the V magnitude of an asteroid using differential photometry, with the magnitudes of comparison stars derived from Carlsberg Meridian Catalogue 14 (CMC14) data. The availability of a large number of…
The present status of the distance scale to Galactic globular clusters is reviewed. Six distance determination techniques which are deemed to be most reliable are discussed in depth. These different techniques are used to calibrate the…
Following an approach by Paczy\'nski & Stanek we compare red clump stars with parallaxes known to better than 10% in the Hipparcos catalog with the red clump stars observed in three fields in M31 using the HST. There are $\sim 600$ and…
We introduce a method for measuring the slopes of mass profiles within dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies directly from stellar spectroscopic data and without adopting a dark matter halo model. Our method combines two recent results: 1)…