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Related papers: Tracing Milky Way substructure with an RR Lyrae hi…

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We present results from the analysis of 2997 fundamental mode RR Lyrae variables located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). For these objects near-infrared time-series photometry from the VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds system (VMC)…

RR Lyrae stars have long been considered reliable tracers of old, metal-poor populations, primarily due to their prevalence in globular clusters and the Galactic halo. However, the discovery of a metal-rich subpopulation in the Galactic…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2025-10-24 HanYuan Zhang , Giuliano Iorio , Vasily Belokurov , N. Wyn Evans , Alexey Bobrick , Valentina D'Orazi

Globular clusters are both primary fossils of galactic evolution and formation and are ideal laboratories for constraining the evolution of low-mass and metal-poor stars. RR Lyrae and type II Cepheid variables are low-mass, radially…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2022-02-16 Anupam Bhardwaj

We present the analysis of 12227 type-ab RR Lyrae found among the 200 million public lightcurves in the Catalina Surveys Data Release 1 (CSDR1). These stars span the largest volume of the Milky Way ever surveyed with RR Lyrae, covering…

We present a sample of ~5,000 RR Lyrae stars selected from the recalibrated LINEAR dataset and detected at heliocentric distances between 5 kpc and 30 kpc over ~8,000 deg^2 of sky. The coordinates and light curve properties, such as period…

We present a comprehensive photometric study of RR Lyrae stars in the M3 globular cluster, utilising a vast dataset of 3140 optical ($UBVRI$) CCD images spanning 35 years from astronomical data archives. We have successfully identified…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2024-05-28 Nitesh Kumar , Anupam Bhardwaj , Harinder P. Singh , Marina Rejkuba , Marcella Marconi , Philippe Prugniel

Understanding the formation and evolutionary history of the Milky Way requires detailed mapping of its stellar components, which preserve fossil records of the Galaxy's assembly through cosmic time. RR Lyrae stars are particularly…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-03-19 Madeline Lucey , Cecilia Mateu , Adrian Price-Whelan , David Hogg , Hans-Walter Rix , Robyn Sanderson

We present the discovery of stellar tidal tails around the Large and the Small Magellanic Clouds in the Gaia DR1 data. In between the Clouds, their tidal arms are stretched towards each other to form an almost continuous stellar bridge. Our…

Context. A number of RR Lyrae stars show variable mean magnitudes in the OGLE survey light curves of the Galactic bulge. Hitherto this phenomenon was not studied, as it was generally assumed to be related to problems with the photometry.…

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is widely considered a corner-stone of the astronomical distance scale, however a difference of 0.2-0.3 mag exists in its distance as predicted by the "short" and "long" distance scales. Distances to the LMC…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 G. Clementini , A. Bragaglia , E. Carretta , L. Di Fabrizio , R. G. Gratton

The VISTA Variables in the V\'ia L\'actea (VVV) Survey is one of the six ESO public surveys currently ongoing at the VISTA telescope on Cerro Paranal, Chile. VVV uses near-IR ($ZYJHK_{\rm s}$) filters that at present provide photometry to a…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-23 F. Gran , D. Minniti , R. K. Saito , C. Navarrete , I. Dékány , I. McDonald , R. Contreras Ramos , M. Catelan

We exploit the first data release from the Gaia mission to identify candidate Mira variables in the outskirts of the Magellanic Clouds. The repeated observations of sources during the initial phase of the Gaia mission is used to identify…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-03-22 Alis J. Deason , Vasily Belokurov , Denis Erkal , Sergey E. Koposov , Dougal Mackey

RR Lyrae variables are excellent population II distance indicators thanks to their well-defined period-luminosity relations (PLRs) at infrared wavelengths. We present results of near-infrared (NIR) monitoring of Galactic globular clusters…

RR Lyrae stars are excellent tracers of stellar populations for old, metal-poor components in the Milky Way Galaxy and the Local Group. Their luminosities have a metallicity-dependence, but determining spectroscopic [Fe/H] metallicities for…

The MACHO Project has catalogued $\sim 8000$ RR Lyrae stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, $\sim 1800$ in the Galactic bulge, and $\sim$ 50 in the Sgr dwarf galaxy. These variables are excellent distance indicators, and are used as tools to…

We present a theoretical approach to infer information about RR Lyrae variables from the morphology of their light curves. The method, already successfully applied to the field first overtone variable U Comae, is now tested on a…

Astrophysics · Physics 2007-05-23 V. Castellani , S. Degl'Innocenti , M. Marconi

We present results of the analysis of 70 RR Lyrae stars located in the bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Combining spectroscopically determined metallicity of these stars from the literature with precise periods from the OGLE III…

We report the spectroscopic analysis of 20 halo ab-type RR Lyrae stars with heliocentric distances between 15 and 165 kpc, conducted using medium-resolution spectra from the Magellan Inamori Kyocera Echelle (MIKE) spectrograph. We obtain…

We provide uniform RR Lyrae-based distances to 39 dwarf galaxies in and around the Local Group. We determine distances based on a Bayesian hierarchical model that uses periods and magnitudes of published RR Lyrae in dwarf galaxies and is…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-06-17 Pranav Nagarajan , Daniel R. Weisz , Kareem El-Badry

The VISTA Variables in the V\'ia L\'actea (VVV) is a near-IR time-domain survey of the Galactic bulge and southern plane. One of the main goals of this survey is to reveal the 3D structure of the Milky Way through their variable stars.…