The Impact of Contaminated RR Lyrae/Globular Cluster Photometry on the Distance Scale

Abstract

RR Lyrae variables and the stellar constituents of globular clusters are employed to establish the cosmic distance scale and age of the universe. However, photometry for RR Lyrae variables in the globular clusters M3, M15, M54, M92, NGC2419, and NGC6441 exhibit a dependence on the clustercentric distance. For example, variables and stars positioned near the crowded high-surface brightness cores of the clusters may suffer from photometric contamination, which invariably affects a suite of inferred parameters (e.g., distance, color excess, absolute magnitude, etc.). The impetus for this study is to mitigate the propagation of systematic uncertainties by increasing awareness of the pernicious impact of contaminated and radial-dependent photometry.

To appear in ApJL

Cited by in corpus (13)

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• Constraining Dust Extinction Properties via the VVV Survey
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• Towards a better understanding of the distance scale from RR Lyrae variable stars: A case study for the inner halo globular cluster NGC 6723
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• The Horizontal Branch of NGC 1851: Constraints from its RR Lyrae Variables
• On the Metallicity Dependence of Classical Cepheid Light Amplitudes
• Identifying Contaminated K-band Globular Cluster RR Lyrae Photometry
• On the Crucial Cluster Andrews-Lindsay 1 and a 4% Distance Solution for its PN
• Variable stars in the VVV globular clusters. II. NGC6441, NGC6569, NGC6626 (M28), NGC6656 (M22), 2MASS-GC02, and Terzan10
• Evidence for Photometric Contamination in Key Observations of Cepheids in the Benchmark Galaxy IC 1613