Related papers: Old-Aged Stellar Population Distance Indicators
The new data for Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE-III) survey allow us to study the three-dimensional distribution of stars corresponding to young (a few tens to a few hundreds of millions of…
We analyse publicly available, individual spectra of four, massive ($M>10^{11}M_{\odot}$) early-type galaxies with redshifts in the range 1.4 < z < 2 to determine their stellar content, extending our previous work up to z~2. The wide…
Optical high-resolution spectra of five central stars of planetary nebulae (CSPN) in the Galactic Bulge have been obtained with Keck/HIRES in order to derive their parameters. Since the distance of the objects is quite well known, such a…
We consider the application of the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) in the optical and in the near infrared for the determination of distances to nearby galaxies. We analyze ACS VI (F555W & F814W) data and self-consistently…
Accurate distances are fundamental to interpreting many measured properties of galaxies. Surprisingly, many of the best-studied spiral galaxies in the Local Volume have distance uncertainties that are much larger than can be achieved with…
We have derived accurate distances to Galactic globular clusters by combining data from the Gaia Early Data Release 3 with distances based on Hubble Space telescope HST data and literature based distances. We determine distances either…
The [O III] 5007 Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function (PNLF) is an excellent extragalactic standard candle. In theory, the PNLF method should not work at all, since the luminosities of the brightest planetary nebulae (PNe) should be highly…
The color-magnitude diagrams of $\sim 5\times 10^5$ stars obtained for 13 fields towards the Galactic bulge with the OGLE project reveal a well-defined population of bulge red clump stars. We find that the distributions of the…
We matched the astrometry of central stars (CSs) of spectroscopically-confirmed Galactic planetary nebulae (PNe) with DR2 Gaia parallaxes ($p$), finding 430 targets in common with $p>0$ and $|\sigma_{\rm p}/p|<1$. A catalog of PNe whose CSs…
The details of bulge formation via collapse, mergers, secular processes or their interplay remain unresolved. To start answering this question and quantify the importance of distinct mechanisms, we mapped a sample of three galactic bulges…
The stellar density distribution of the bulge is analyzed through one of its tracers. We use oxygen-rich Miras variables from the Catchpole et al. (2016) survey and OGLE-III survey as standard candles. The average age of these stars is…
Various methods for age dating globular clusters in ellipticals are presented. We first present spectroscopy of individual globular clusters (feasible with the advent of the 10m-class telescopes), and the measurement of Balmer line indices.…
We use data on variable stars from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE III) survey to determine the three-dimensional structure of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). Deriving individual distances to RR Lyrae stars and Cepheids…
The multi-messenger observation of GW170817 enabled the first historic measurement of the Hubble constant via a standard siren, so-called in analogy to standard candles that enabled the measurement of the luminosity distance versus redshift…
We present a new method for measuring the mean age of old/intermediate stellar populations in resolved, metal-poor ($\rm \langle[Fe/H]\rangle \lesssim -1.5$) galaxies using only the morphology of the horizontal branch (HB) and an estimate…
The efficient use of near-IR data in studies of external stellar populations depends on our ability to recognize the nature of the predominant sources of light, and to interprete these findings in terms of age and metallicity. Here we focus…
A serious limitation in the study of many globular clusters -- especially those located near the Galactic Center -- has been the existence of large and differential extinction by foreground dust. In a series of papers we intend to map the…
We present line strengths in the bulges and inner disks of 38 galaxies in the local universe, including several galaxies whose bulges were previously identified as being disk-like in their colors or kinematics, to see if their spectral…
Pulsating stars are universally recognized as precise distance indicators and tracers of stellar populations. Their variability, combined with well-defined relationships between pulsation properties and intrinsic evolutionary parameters…
I use the largest available sample of Type II plateau supernovae to examine the previously reported luminosity-velocity relation. This study confirms such relation which permits one to standardize the luminosities of these objects from a…