Related papers: Cosmic Distances: Current Odds and Future Perspect…
The first section discusses a recalibration of the luminosity-linewidth technique and its use in a determination of H_0. The recalibration introduces (i) new cluster calibration data, (ii) new corrections for reddening as a function of…
We develop and describe a Bayesian statistical analysis to solve the surface brightness equations for Cepheid distances and stellar properties. Our analysis provides a mathematically rigorous and objective solution to the problem, including…
Classical Cepheids are the most popular distance indicators and tracers of young stellar populations. The key advantage is that they are bright and they can be easily identified in Local Group and Local Volume galaxies. Their evolutionary…
General relativity reproduces main current cosmological observations, assuming the validity of cosmic distance duality relation (CDDR) at all scales and epochs. However, CDDR is poorly tested in the redshift interval between the farthest…
We investigate the properties of the so-called BL Her stars, i.e., Population II Cepheids with periods shorter than 8 days, using updated pulsation models and evolutionary tracks computed adopting a metal abundance in the range of Z=0.0001…
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…
As a response to the Kepler white paper call, we propose to keep Kepler pointing to its current field of view and continue observing thousands of large amplitude variables (Cepheid, RR Lyrae and delta Scuti stars among others) with high…
We present and discuss theoretical pulsational predictions concerning the properties of Classical Cepheids. The computations have been performed for three different chemical compositions taken as representative of Cepheids in the Magellanic…
State-of-the art photometric measurements of extragalactic Cepheids account for the mean additional light due to chance superposition of Cepheids on crowded backgrounds through the use of artificial star measurements. However, light from…
More than two hundred classical cepheids were measured by the Hipparcos astrometric satellite, making possible a geometrical calibration of the cepheid distance scale. However, the large average distance of even the nearest cepheids…
We report new upper limits on any possible long-term time variation of the ratio of the electron to proton masses, $(m_e/m_p)$, the fine-structure constant, ($\alpha$), and the quantity $\alpha^2 g_p(m_e/m_p)$, where $g_p$ is the proton…
Variable stars have been used for over one hundred years as probes for determining astronomical distances; these distances can be used to map the three-dimensional (3D) structure of nearby galaxies. Exploiting the effect that moving to the…
- Constraining the cosmological parameters and understanding Dark Energy have tremendous implications for the nature of the Universe and its physical laws. - The pervasive limit of systematic uncertainties reached by cosmography based on…
Previous nonlinear fundamental pulsation models for classical Cepheids with metal content Z <= 0.02 are implemented with new computations at super-solar metallicity (Z=0.03, 0.04) and selected choices of the helium-to-metal enrichment ratio…
The technique of line depth ratios (LDR) is one of the methods to determine the effective temperature of a star. They are crucial in the spectroscopic studies of variable stars like Cepheids since no simultaneous photometry is usually…
We point out that the absolute magnitude of the Galactic Cepheids, which have been used for local calibrations for Cepheid period-luminosity relation, shows an unexpectedly large metal abundance effect. This indicates that either Cepheids…
Using published HST Cepheid data from 25 galaxies, we have found a correlation between the P-L dispersion and host galaxy metallicity which is significant at the ~3sigma level in the V band. This result supports the suggestion that the…
Classical Cepheids (CCs) are solid distance indicators and tracers of young stellar populations. Our aim is to provide iron, oxygen, and sulfur abundances for the largest and most homogeneous sample of Galactic CCs ever analyzed. The…
The correlation between the luminosities and rotation velocities of galaxies can be used to estimate distances to late-type galaxies. It is an appropriate moment to re-evaluate this method given the great deal of new information available.…
The Period - metallicity - K band luminosity (PLK) relation for RR Lyrae stars in 15 Galactic globular clusters and in the LMC globular cluster Reticulum has been derived. It is based on accurate near infrared (K) photometry combined with…