Related papers: Has Blending Compromised Cepheid-Based Determinati…
Motivated by an amazing range of reported distances to the nearby Local Group spiral galaxy M33, we have obtained deep near-infrared photometry for 26 long-period Cepheids in this galaxy with the ESO VLT. From the data we constructed…
Distant regions close to the plane of our Galaxy are largely unexplored by optical surveys as they are hidden by dust. We have used near-infrared data (that minimizes dust obscuration) from the ESO Public survey VISTA Variables of the Via…
We report on the discovery of Cepheids in the Virgo spiral galaxy NGC 4535, based on observations made with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on board the Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 4535 is one of 18 galaxies observed as a part of The…
The Magellanic Clouds, especially the Large Magellanic Cloud, are places where multiple distance indicators can be compared with each other in a straight-forward manner at considerable precision. We here review the distances derived from…
We aim to investigate the IR excess of 45 MW Cepheids combining different observables to constrain the presence of CSE. We used the SPIPS algorithm, a robust implementation of the parallax-of-pulsation method that combines photometry,…
The methods of calibrating the luminosities of galactic Cepheids and determining Cepheid reddenings are considered in some detail. Together with work on NGC4258 this suggests that the calibration presented is valid to about 0.1mag (s.e.) at…
Presently a ${>}3\sigma$ tension exists between values of the Hubble constant $H_0$ derived from analysis of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background by Planck, and local measurements of the expansion using calibrators of type Ia…
Cepheids are key distance indicators and benchmarks for stellar evolution, yet most of them are members of binary or multiple systems. While spectroscopic surveys and Gaia proper-motion anomalies reveal a high binary fraction, the…
In this work, we explore the possibility of using the Wesenheit function to derive individual distances to Galactic Cepheids, as the dispersion of the reddening free Wesenheit function is smaller than the optical period-luminosity (P-L)…
We employ the very recent photometric data of the OGLE project together with stellar atmosphere and linear pulsation models to determine the distance modulus of the Small Magellanic Cloud from its double-mode Cepheids. Based on the…
Using a mid-infrared calibration of the Cepheid distance scale based on recent observations at 3.6 um with the Spitzer Space Telescope, we have obtained a new, high-accuracy calibration of the Hubble constant. We have established the mid-IR…
The most stringent local measurement of the Hubble-Lema\^itre constant from Cepheid-calibrated Type Ia supernovae (SNe~Ia) differs from the value inferred via the cosmic microwave background radiation ({\it Planck}$+\Lambda$CDM) by $\sim…
We present the first mid-infrared Period-Luminosity (PL) relations for Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) Cepheids. Single-epoch observations of 70 Cepheids were extracted from Spitzer IRAC observations at 3.6, 4.5, 5.8 and 8.0 microns,…
We have obtained deep images in the near-infrared J and K filters of four fields in the Sculptor Group spiral galaxy NGC 55 with the ESO VLT and ISAAC camera. For 40 long-period Cepheid variables in these fields which were recently…
Type Ia supernovae are the established `standard candle' in the construction of the Hubble diagram out to high luminosity distances. Since the Hubble constant that best fits observations of these supernovae often turns out to be high…
We present a systematic analysis of the cosmological constraints from the "Pantheon Sample" of 1048 Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia) in the redshift range $0.01<z<2.3$ compiled by Scolnic et al. (2018). Applying the flux-averaging method for…
Several standard candles have been tested and used to measure accurate extragalactic distances over the past decades. There have been discussions regarding the possibility of using Type-II Cepheids (T2Cs) as an alternative tool, but rarely…
A clustering analysis is performed on two samples of $\sim 600$ faint galaxies each, in two widely separated regions of the sky, including the Hubble Deep Field. One of the survey regions is configured so that some galaxy pairs span angular…
Motivated by the large observed diversity in the properties of extra-galactic extinction by dust, we re-analyse the Cepheid calibration used to infer the Hubble constant, $H_0$, from Type Ia supernovae, using Cepheid data in 19 Type Ia…
Determinations of the Hubble constant based on the local distance ladder remain in significant tension with early-Universe inferences from the cosmic microwave background. While this tension is often discussed in terms of new physics or…