Related papers: Challenges in Cepheid Evolution and Pulsation Mode…
Context. The Cepheid mass discrepancy, the difference between masses predicted from stellar evolution and stellar pulsation calculations, is a challenge for the understanding of stellar astrophysics. Recent models of the eclipsing binary…
Physical parameters were recently measured for several Cepheids in eclipsing binary systems in the LMC. It is a good opportunity to compare these results with models obtained from pulsation theory. Having well determined physical parameters…
Evolutionary tracks for $2-8M_\odot$ stars, with metallicities of $Z=0.014$, $0.006$, and $0.002$, including rotation, are computed with Modules for Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA). We study how rotation impacts the evolutionary…
The mass of a Cepheid is a fundamental parameter for studying the pulsation and evolution of intermediate-mass stars. But determining this variable has been a long-standing problem for decades. Detecting the companions (by spectroscopy or…
Classical Cepheids are powerful probes of both stellar evolution and near-field cosmology thanks to their high luminosities, pulsations, and that they follow the Leavitt (Period-Luminosity) Law. However, there still exist a number of…
Thanks to HST, there are now many galaxies with Cepheid distances and these provide the main platform for the calibration of the secondary distance indicators. I review recent progress in our understanding of the standard candle properties…
We review the current state of Cepheid modeling and discuss its dominant deficiency, namely the use of time dependent mixing length. Notwithstanding, Cepheid modeling has achieved some excellent successes, and we mention some of the most…
It has been observed that Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds have lower masses for the same luminosity than those in the Milky Way. The model, from Neilson & Lester (2008), of pulsation-driven mass loss for Cepheids is applied to theoretical…
We present a progress report of our project aiming to increase the number of known Cepheids in double-lined binary (SB2) systems from six to 100 or more. This will allow us, among other goals, to accurately measure masses for a large sample…
I investigate the discrepancy between the evolution and pulsation masses for Cepheid variables. A number of recent works have proposed that non-canonical mass-loss can account for the mass discrepancy. This mass-loss would be such that a…
Distances measured using Cepheid variable stars have been essential for establishing the cosmological distance scale and the value of the Hubble constant. These stars have remained the primary extragalactic distance indicator since 1929…
Extragalactic Cepheids are the basic rungs of the cosmic distance scale. They are excellent standard candles, although their luminosities and corresponding distance estimates can be affected by the particular properties of the host galaxy.…
The methods of calibrating the luminosities of galactic Cepheids and determining Cepheid reddenings are considered in some detail. Together with work on NGC4258 this suggests that the calibration presented is valid to about 0.1mag (s.e.) at…
We utilize nonlinear pulsation models to reproduce the observed light and color curves for two samples of bump Cepheid variables, 19 from the Large Magellanic Cloud and 9 from the Small Magellanic Cloud. This analysis determines the…
Type II Cepheids are pulsating stars that can be used as standard candles for old stellar populations due to their characteristic Period-Luminosity and Period-Luminosity-Colour relations. They are traditionally divided in 3 sub-classes,…
The circumstellar envelopes (CSE) of Cepheids are still not well characterized despite their potential impact on distance determination via both the period-luminosity relation and the parallax-of-pulsation method. This paper aims to…
Polaris the Cepheid has been observed for centuries, presenting surprises and changing our view of Cepheids and stellar astrophysics, in general. Specifically, understanding Polaris helps anchor the Cepheid Leavitt law, but the distance…
The extragalactic distance scale is perhaps the most important application of stellar distance indicators. Among these, classical Cepheids are high-accuracy standard candles that support a $1.4\%$ measurement of Hubble's constant, $H_0$.…
Over the past decade, the Secret Lives of Cepheids (SLiC) program has been carried out at Villanova University to study aspects and behaviors of classical Cepheids that are still not well-understood. In this, the first of several planned…
We review the use of Cepheids as distance indicators with particular emphasis on the methods which have been applied to HST observations of Cepheids. The calibration of the period-luminosity relations is examined in detail and we identify…