Related papers: The Distance to the Magellanic Clouds

Recent proper motion measurements of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC, respectively) by Kallivayalil et al (2006a,b) suggest that the 3D velocities of the Clouds are substantially higher (~100 km/s) than previously…

Robust reddening maps of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC/SMC) are crucial for a wide range of astrophysical studies, including the calibration of the cosmic distance ladder, investigations of stellar populations in…

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…

We have obtained deep near infrared J- and K-band observations of 14 BL Herculis and 5 W Virginis SMC stars from the OGLE III survey with the ESO New Technology Telescope equipped with the SOFI infrared camera. From these observations,…

The I-band brightness of clump stars has been used recently to determine the distance to the bulge, the LMC and SMC, and to M31. It was assumed to be a standard candle based on the observational fact that it is independent of (V-I)-colour…

By collecting distances from the literature, a set of 73 planetary nebulae with mean distances of high accuracy is derived. This sample is used for recalibration of the mass-radius relationship, used by many statistical distance methods. An…

We present the BVI photometric maps of the Large Magellanic Cloud. They contain BVI photometry and astrometry of more than 7 million stars from the central parts of the LMC. The data were collected during the second phase of the OGLE…

We present a study of simultaneous determination of mean distance and reddening to the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using the two photometric band RR Lyrae data. Currently available largest number of highly accurate and precise light curve…

We use recently updated globular cluster distances to estimate the distance to the Galactic centre, finding 7.4 \pm 0.2|stat \pm 0.2|sys kpc from symmetry considerations. We recalibrate the red clump magnitude from Hipparcos stars, finding…

Despite their close proximity, the complex interplay between the two Magellanic Clouds, the Milky Way, and the resulting tidal features, is still poorly understood. Recent studies have shown that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has a very…

Numerous research topics rely on an improved cosmic distance scale (e.g., cosmology, gravitational waves), and the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database of Distances (NED-D) supports those efforts by tabulating multiple redshift-independent…

Distance measurements to molecular clouds are important, but are often made separately for each cloud of interest, employing very different different data and techniques. We present a large, homogeneous catalog of distances to molecular…

(Abridged) We analyze the UBVI color-magnitude diagrams towards the Galactic bulge in a relatively low-reddening region of Baade's Window. The dereddened red giant branch is very wide [~1.0 mag in (U-B)_0 and ~0.4 mag in (B-V)_0 and…

We present a detailed map of the reddening in a 1.9 x 1.5 degree section of the Large Magellanic Cloud, constructed from UBVI photometry of 2069 O and B main sequence stars. We use two reddening-free photometric parameters to determine the…

We analyzed HST/WFPC2 colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of 15 populous Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) stellar clusters with ages between ~ 0.3 Gyr and ~ 3 Gyr. These (V, B-V) CMDs are photometrically homogeneous and typically reach V \~ 22.…

We present an analysis of the 3-D structure of the Magellanic Clouds, using period-luminosity (P-L) relations of pulsating red giants in the OGLE-II sample. By interpreting deviations from the mean P-L relations as distance modulus…

The HST proper motion (PM) measurements of the Clouds have severe implications for their interaction history with the Milky Way (MW) and with each other. The Clouds are likely on their first passage about the MW and the SMC's orbit about…

Since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope nine years ago, Cepheid distances to 25 galaxies have been determined for the purpose of calibrating secondary distance indicators. A variety of these can now be calibrated, and the…

The bar of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is one of the prominent, but controversial feature regarding its location with respect to the disk of the LMC. In order to study the relative location of the bar with respect to the disk, we…

Using the definitive reductions of the IUE light curves by Sonneborn et al. (1997) and an extensive set of HST images of SN 1987A we have repeated and improved our original analysis (Panagia et al. 1991) to derive a better determination of…