Related papers: Toward an internally consistent astronomical dista…
We have used new parallax measurements, obtained by the Hipparcos satellite, of fifteen nearby, metal-poor stars to re-define the subdwarf main-sequence. All of these stars have parallaxes determined to an accuracy of at least 12 %.…
Galaxy-scale strong lensing is a powerful tool in Astrophysics and Cosmology, enabling studies of massive galaxies' internal structure, their formation and evolution, stellar initial mass function, and cosmological parameters. In this…
Purpose: RR Lyrae stars are important distance indicators. They are usually present in globular clusters where they were first discovered. The study of their properties and distribution in our Galaxy and external galaxies constitutes a…
Future use of type Ia supernovae for cosmology aims not only to determine the equation of state of dark energy, but also to constrain possible variations in its value. To achieve this goal, supernovae need to become better calibrated…
Accurate distances to local molecular clouds are critical for understanding the star and planet formation process, yet distance measurements are often obtained inhomogeneously on a cloud-by-cloud basis. We have recently developed a method…
Abridged: The golden age of astrophysics is upon us with both grand discoveries (extra-solar planets, dark matter, dark energy) and precision cosmology. Fundamental understanding of the working of stars and galaxies is within reach, thanks…
Type Ia supernovae are currently the best known standard candles at cosmological distances. In addition to providing a powerful probe of dark energy they are an ideal source of information about the peculiar velocity field of the local…
Calibration precision is currently a limiting systematic in 21 cm cosmology experiments. While there are innumerable calibration approaches, most can be categorized as either `sky-based,' relying on an extremely accurate model of…
We present mean horizontal branch absolute magnitudes and iron abundances for a sample of 39 globular clusters. These quantities were calculated in an unprecedented homogeneous fashion based on Fourier decomposition of ligt curves of RR…
Cosmography is a powerful tool to investigate the Universe kinematic and then to reconstruct dynamics in a model-independent way. However, recent new measurements of supernovae Ia and quasars have populated the Hubble diagram up to high…
We describe a procedure for accurately determining luminosity distances to Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) without knowledge of redshift. This procedure, which may be used as an extension of any of the various distance determination methods…
In the early nineties several teams started large scale systematic surveys of the Magellanic Clouds and the Galactic Bulge to search for microlensing effects. As a by product, these groups have created enormous time-series databases of…
The time delay between the arrival of photons of multiple images of time variable sources can be used to constrain absolute distances in the Universe (Refsdal 1964), and in turn obtain a direct estimate of the Hubble constant and other…
The most common methods to derive the distance to globular clusters using RR Lyrae variables are reviewed, with a special attention to those that have experienced significant improvement in the past few years. From the weighted average of…
We test the distance--duality relation $\eta \equiv d_L / [ (1 + z)^2 d_A ] = 1$ between cosmological luminosity distance ($d_L$) from the JLA SNe Ia compilation (arXiv:1401.4064) and angular-diameter distance ($d_A$) based on Baryon…
A most desirable feature of a standard candle to estimate astronomical distances is robustness against changes in metallicity and age. It is argued that the radii of main sequence stars with spectral types from solar to A0 show predictable…
We propose a method of distance determination based on the internal structure and dynamics of disk galaxies. The method relies on the universal luminosity profile of a stellar disk represented by an exponential law. Calibrating nearby…
Distant supernovae can now be detected routinely. To date 34 supernovae at $z > 0.1$ have been discovered. Among them are 12 Type~Ia supernovae confirmed spectroscopically and suited to measure the cosmic deceleration when appropriately…
The galaxy distributions along the line-of-sight are significantly contaminated by the uncertainty on redshift measurements obtained through multiband photometry, which makes it difficult to get cosmic distance information measured from…
The quantum model of the homogeneous and isotropic universe predicts logarithmic-law dependence of coordinate distance to source on redshift z which is in good agreement with type Ia supernovae and radio galaxies observations for the…