Variable Stars and Galactic Structure

Abstract

Variable stars have a unique part to play in Galactic astronomy. Among the most important of these variables are the Cepheids (types I and II), the RR Lyraes and the Miras (O- and C-rich). The current status of the basic calibration of these stars in their roles as distance, structure and population indicators is outlined and some examples of recent applications of these stars to Galactic and extragalactic problems is reviewed. The expected impact of Gaia on this type of work is discussed and the need for complementary ground based observations, particularly large scale near-infrared photometry, is stressed.

IAUS 298 Setting the scene for Gaia and LAMOST, 12 page review with 11 figures

References in corpus (10)

• An eclipsing binary distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud accurate to 2 per cent
• Two Stellar Components in the Halo of the Milky Way
• Cepheid Parallaxes and the Hubble Constant
• Near-Infrared Photometry of Carbon Stars
• The period-luminosity relation for type II Cepheids in globular clusters
• AGB Stars in the Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• The Local Group Galaxy NGC 6822 and its Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars
• Carbon-rich dust production in metal-poor galaxies in the Local Group
• Asymptotic Giant Branch Stars in the Phoenix Dwarf Galaxy
• A Carbon-rich Mira variable in a globular cluster: A stellar merger

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The ASAS-SN Catalog of Variable Stars IX: The Spectroscopic Properties of Galactic Variable Stars
• Hunting for C-rich long-period variable stars in the Milky Way's bar-bulge using unsupervised classification of Gaia BP/RP spectra
• A kinematic calibration of the O-rich Mira variable period-age relation from Gaia
• Determination of pulsation periods and other parameters of 2875 stars classified as MIRA in the All Sky Automated Survey (ASAS)
• A VLBA Trigonometric Parallax for RR Aql and the Mira PL Relation