Related papers: The DIRECT Project
The goal of this work is to conduct a photometric study of eclipsing binaries in M31. We apply a modified box-fitting algorithm to search for eclipsing binary candidates and determine their period. We classify these candidates into…
The EBLM project aims to characterise very low-mass stars that are companions to solar-type stars in eclipsing binaries. We describe the history and motivation for this project, the methodology we use to obtain precise mass, radius and…
The Comprehensive Research with Echelles on the Most interesting Eclipsing binaries (CR\'EME) projects was aimed to collect high-resolutions spectra of about 380 detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs), which mostly do not have literature RV…
I present an overview of the techniques used for detecting and following up binaries in nearby galaxies and present the current census of extragalactic binaries, with a focus on eclipsing systems. The motivation for looking in other…
Great investments of observing time have been dedicated to the study of nearby spiral galaxies with diverse goals ranging from understanding the star formation process to characterizing their dark matter distributions. Accurate distances…
We present here the final results of the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project to measure the Hubble constant. We summarize our method, the results and the uncertainties, tabulate our revised distances, and give the implications of these…
The accuracy of theoretical mass, radius and effective temperature values for M-dwarf stars is an active topic of debate. Differences between observed and theoretical values have raised the possibility that current theoretical stellar…
Distances of galaxies in the Hubble Space Telescope Key Project are based on the Cepheid period-luminosity relation. An alternative basis is the tip of the red giant branch. Using archival HST data, we calibrate the infrared Tully-Fisher…
New and existing X-ray, UBVJHKsW(1-4), and spectroscopic observations were analyzed to constrain fundamental parameters for M25, NGC 7790, and dust along their sight-lines. The star clusters are of particular importance given they host the…
Accurate distances are fundamental to interpreting many measured properties of galaxies. Surprisingly, many of the best-studied spiral galaxies in the Local Volume have distance uncertainties that are much larger than can be achieved with…
Galactic Cepheids are necessary tools for calibrating the period-luminosity relation, but distances to individual Galactic Cepheids are difficult to precisely measure and are limited to a small number of techniques such as direct parallax,…
Circumbinary planets (CBPs) are planets that orbit around both stars of a binary system. This chapter traces the history of research on CBPs and provides an overview over the current knowledge about CBPs and their detection methods. After…
I present a brief summary of three different types of binary star - astrometric, spectroscopic and eclipsing - and tabulate the properties of these systems that can be determined directly from observations. Eclipsing binary stars are the…
Exoplanet transit and Doppler surveys discover many binary stars during their operation that can be used to conduct a variety of ancillary science. Specifically, eclipsing binary stars can be used to study the stellar mass-radius…
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…
The Surface Brightness Fluctuation method has been shown to be a powerful distance indicator for dwarf elliptical galaxies to very low surface brightness levels. It is applicable to stellar systems that are out of reach for classical…
Accurate distances are key to obtaining intrinsic properties of astronomical objects such as luminosity or size. Globular clusters (GCs) follow a well-defined relation between their absolute magnitudes and internal stellar velocity…
Determining the expansion of the universe, i.e. the Hubble constant (H0) to better than 2% is required in order to understand the nature of dark energy. However, the two most accurate methods to do it, the cosmic microwave background and…
Direct detection, also known as direct imaging, is a method for discovering and characterizing the atmospheres of planets at intermediate and wide separations. It is the only means of obtaining spectra of non-transiting exoplanets.…
We have begun a programme to obtain high-precision photometry of bright detached eclipsing binary (dEB) stars with the Wide field InfraRed Explorer (WIRE) satellite. Due to the small aperture of WIRE only stars brighter than V=6 can be…