Related papers: Bright metal-poor variables: why "Anomalous" Cephe…
The chemical enrichments detected in CEMP-$s$ stars are believed to be the consequence of a mass-transfer episode from a now extinct AGB primary star. This hypothesis is borne out by the fact that most CEMP-$s$ stars exhibit RV variations…
Local Group (LG) very metal-poor massive stars are the best proxy for the First Stars of the Universe and fundamental to modelling the evolution of early galaxies. These stars may follow new evolutionary pathways restricted to very low…
An analysis of the observed characteristics of the Galactic Cepheid variables is carried out in the framework of their period-luminosity relation being used as a standard candle for distance measurement. The variation of the observed number…
In this paper we present an extended set of nonlinear convective pulsation models at varying the metallicity and DY/DZ ratio. The predicted instability strip and bolometric light curves are discussed by comparing the new models with our…
We report the discovery of a new subclass of carbon-enhanced metal-poor (CEMP) stars, characterized by high absolute carbon abundances (A(C) > 7.39) and extremely low metallicity ([Fe/H] $<=$ -3.1) but notably lacking enhancements in…
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…
(abridged) We present the first study of the variable star populations in the isolated dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) Cetus and Tucana. Based on Hubble Space Telescope images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in the F475W and…
We have studied Leo A - the isolated and extremely gas rich dwarf irregular galaxy of very low stellar mass and metallicity. Ages of the stellar populations in Leo A are ranging from ~10 Myr to ~10 Gyr. Here we report the discovery of an…
The metal content of a galaxy's interstellar medium reflects the interplay between different evolutionary processes such as feedback from massive stars and the accretion of gas from the intergalactic medium. Despite the expected abundance…
Classical Cepheid stars that pulsate in the first overtone radial mode often exhibit additional periodicities at the millimagnitude level. Extensive studies of the OGLE data of the Magellanic Clouds have revealed distinct groups based on…
(ABRIDGED) We have applied the near-IR Barnes-Evans realization of the Baade-Wesselink method as calibrated by Fouque & Gieren (1997) to five metal-poor Cepheids with periods between 13 and 17 days in the Small Magellanic Cloud as well as…
The impact of metallicity on the Cepheid Leavitt law (LL) and, in turn, the Hubble constant, has been the subject of much recent debate. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of metallicity effects on Cepheid LLs based on synthetic…
We investigate the variable star content of the isolated, Local Group, dwarf spheroidal galaxy (dSph) Cetus. Multi-epoch, wide-field images collected with the VLT/VIMOS camera allowed us to detect 638 variable stars (630 RR Lyrae stars and…
Abundances for alpha-elements and Fe in about 150 field subdwarfs and early subgiants with accurate parallaxes and kinematic data are used to discuss the run of abundance ratios in metal-poor stars in the solar neighborhood. Based on…
We estimate the frequency of Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor (CEMP) stars among very metal-poor stars, based on an analysis of 349 stars with available high-resolution spectra observed as part of the Hamburg/ESO R-process Enhanced Star (HERES)…
Carbon-rich (C-rich) stars can be found at all metallicities and evolutionary stages. They are often the result of mass-transfer from a companion, but some of the most metal-poor C-rich objects are likely carrying the imprint of the…
The compilation of the metallicity values of $\omega$~Centauri stars led to detection of spatial asymmetry in the metallicity distribution of the bright giants. It was found that the most and least metal-poor objects are separated along…
Context. A longstanding challenge for understanding classical Cepheids is the Cepheid mass discrepancy, where theoretical mass estimates using stellar evolution and stellar pulsation calculations have been found to differ by approximately…
We report the result of our near-infrared survey of short-period variable stars (P<60d) in a field-of-view of 20'x30' towards the Galactic Centre. Forty-five variables are discovered and we classify the variables based on their light curve…
As a galaxy evolves, its chemical composition changes and the abundance ratios of different elements are powerful probes of the underlying evolutionary processes. Phosphorous is an element whose evolution has remained quite elusive until…