Related papers: The metallicity sensitivity of a surface brightnes…
Metallicity is one of four free parameters typically considered when fitting isochrones to the cluster sequence. Unfortunately, this parameter is often ignored or assumed to be solar in most papers. Hence an unknown bias is introduced in…
BVI photometry of the Magellanic Clouds collected during the OGLE-II microlensing experiment makes it possible to study in detail photometric properties of the "major" stellar distance indicators in the Magellanic Clouds. In addition to…
The extragalactic distance scale builds directly on the Cepheid Period-Luminosity (PL) relation as delineated by the sample of Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). However, the LMC is a dwarf irregular galaxy, quite different from…
A sample of 37 Galactic, 10 LMC and 6 SMC cepheids is compiled for which individual metallicity estimates exist and BVIK photometry in almost all cases. The Galactic cepheids all have an individual distance estimate available. For the MC…
Recent HST determinations of the expansion's rate of the Universe (the Hubble constant, H_0) assumed that the Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation at V and I are independent of metallicity (Freedman, et al., 1996, Saha et al., 1996, Tanvir et…
A general review is given of the calibration of the Cepheid distance scale, with particular reference to its use in the determination of H0. Emphasis is placed on the advantage of using a galactic calibration of the Cepheid scale, rather…
We present a self-consistent study of cool supergiants (CSGs) belonging to the Magellanic clouds. We calculated stellar atmospheric parameters using LTE KURUCZ and MARCS atmospheric models for more than 400 individual targets by fitting a…
Variable stars with well-calibrated period-luminosity relationships provide accurate distance measurements to nearby galaxies and are therefore a vital tool for cosmology and astrophysics. While these measurements typically rely on samples…
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…
I show that the standard microlensing technique to measure the angular radius of a star using color/surface-brightness relations can be inverted, via late-time proper motion measurements, to calibrate these relations. The method is…
(abridged) The aim of this paper is to investigate the metallicity dependence of the PL relation in V and K, based on a sample of 128 Galactic, 36 LMC, and 6 SMC Cepheids with individual Baade-Wesselink (BW) distances and individually…
There is a serious discrepancy between the distance to the LMC derived from the Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation and that obtained by using the Galactic calibration for the luminosity of RR Lyrae stars. It is suggested that this problem…
The Cepheid Period-Luminosity (PL) relation is the key tool for measuring astronomical distances and for establishing the extragalactic distance scale. In particular, the local value of the Hubble constant ($H_0$) strongly depends on…
With the aid of stellar atmosphere models, we derive iron abundances [Fe/H] from the OGLE B, V, I photometry on the Magellanic Cloud Cepheids. We show that in both clouds the average metallicities of the first overtone variables are lower…
This is the second of two papers exploring the effects of metallicity on the multi-wavelength properties of Cepheids in terms of their multi-wavelength period-luminosity (PL) relations, impacting their use as extragalactic distance…
We present new accurate Period-Luminosity (PL) and Period-Wesenheit (PW) relations in the V,J,Ks bands based on a sample of more than 4500 Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) whose photometry was obtained in the context of the…
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…
Based on consistent evolutionary and pulsation calculations, we analyse the effect of metallicity and of different convection treatments in the stellar models on period - magnitude, - color and - radius relationships. In order to perform an…
In a series of three papers, we investigate the current status of published metallicities for open clusters that were derived from a variety of photometric and spectroscopic methods. The current article focuses on spectroscopic methods. The…
An analysis of the observed characteristics of the Galactic Cepheid variables is carried out in the framework of their period-luminosity relation being used as a standard candle for distance measurement. The variation of the observed number…