Related papers: A new look at the primary distance indicators
Anomalous Cepheids are radially pulsating stars observed in dwarf galaxies, the Galactic bulge and halo, and globular clusters. Similarly to other radially pulsating stars, they can be used as distance indicators through their…
The Cepheids' P-L relation got itself talked about again in the recent past due to claims of observed metallicity dependences of at least its zero point. The divergences of the observational results obtained by the different authors are…
A distance-based inconsistency indicator, defined by the third author for the consistency-driven pairwise comparisons method, is extended to the incomplete case. The corresponding optimization problem is transformed into an equivalent…
We study the kinematics of a sample of classical Cepheids younger than 120 Myr. For these stars, the estimates of distances taken from Skowron et al., which are based on the period-luminosity relation, and the line-of-sight velocities and…
We present photometry of 30 Galactic RR Lyrae variables taken with HST WFC3/IR for the Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. These measurements form the base of the distance ladder measurements that comprise a pure Population II base to a…
Using our interferometric observations of seven classical Cepheids reported in Kervella et al. (2003, Paper I), complemented by previously existing measurements, we derive new calibrations of the Cepheids Period-Radius (P-R) and…
The classic problem of detection of periodic signals in the presence of noise becomes much more challenging if the observation times are themselves periodic, contain large gaps, or consist of data from several different instruments. For RR…
Six of the principal galaxy distance indicators are discussed: Cepheid variables, the Tully-Fisher relation, the Dn-sigma relation, Surface Brightness Fluctuations, Brightest Cluster Galaxies, and Type Ia Supernovae. The role they play in…
The most common methods to derive the distance to globular clusters using RR Lyrae variables are reviewed, with a special attention to those that have experienced significant improvement in the past few years. From the weighted average of…
We demonstrate how the Fundamental Manifold (FM) can be used to cross-calibrate distance estimators even when those "standard candles" are not found in the same galaxy. Such an approach greatly increases the number of distance measurements…
We present some recent findings concerning the use of RR Lyrae as distance indicators and stellar tracers. We outline pros and cons of field and cluster RR Lyrae stars and discuss recent theoretical findings concerning the use of the Bailey…
A recalibration of the luminosity-linewidth technique is discussed which introduces (i) new cluster calibration data, (ii) new corrections for reddening as a function of inclination, and (iii) a new zero-point calibration using 13 galaxies…
The statistical test described by Wielen et al.(1994) is used to derive new zero-points of ground-based Cepheid period-luminosity (PL) and period-luminosity-colour (PLC) relations. Eleven relations are compared with the Hipparcos data. Our…
The present work aims to build a new statistical distance scale for planetary nebulae (PNe) based on a rigorous calibration sample. The distances of the calibration sample are derived from the trigonometric parallax method using the recent…
The Rayleigh criterion has long served as a fundamental limit for the resolution of optical imaging. Recent advances in multiparameter quantum metrology have led to quantum superresolution that can break this limit and achieve nonvanishing…
We present an absolute parallax and relative proper motion for the fundamental distance scale calibrator, RR Lyr. We obtain these with astrometric data from FGS 3, a white-light interferometer on HST. We find $\pi_{abs} = 3.82 \pm 0.2$ mas.…
We discuss the impact that Gaia, a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission that has been in scientific operations since July 2014, is expected to have on the definition of the cosmic distance ladder and the study of resolved stellar…
When matching parts of a surface to its whole, a fundamental question arises: Which points should be included in the matching process? The issue is intensified when using isometry to measure similarity, as it requires the validation of…
New estimate of the distances of 36 nearby galaxies is presented. It is based on the calibration of the V- and I-band Period-Lumi- nosity relations for galactic Cepheids measured by the HIPPARCOS mission. The distance moduli are obtained in…
Cepheids are the pillar of the extragalactic distance scale, but their reach in distance is not sufficient to calibrate H_0. Yet HST has provided Cepheid distances to eight galaxies which have produced SNe Ia. The latter are used as nearly…