Bulge RR Lyrae stars in the VVV tile $\text{b201}$

Abstract

The VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) Survey is one of the six ESO public surveys currently ongoing at the VISTA telescope on Cerro Paranal, Chile. VVV uses near-IR ($ZYJH{K}_{\mathrm{s}}$) filters that at present provide photometry to a depth of $K_{\mathrm{s}}\sim 17.0$ mag in up to 36 epochs spanning over four years, and aim at discovering more than 10${}^6$ variable sources as well as trace the structure of the Galactic bulge and part of the southern disk. A variability search was performed to find RR Lyrae variable stars. The low stellar density of the VVV tile $\text{b201}$, which is centered at ($\ell ,b$) $\sim$ ($-9^{\circ },-9^{\circ }$), makes it suitable to search for variable stars. Previous studies have identified some RR Lyrae stars using optical bands that served to test our search procedure. The main goal is to measure the reddening, interstellar extinction, and distances of the RR Lyrae stars and to study their distribution on the Milky Way bulge. A total of 1.5 sq deg were analyzed, and we found 39 RR Lyrae stars, 27 of which belong to the ab-type and 12 to the c-type. Our analysis recovers all the previously identified RR Lyrae variables in the field and discovers 29 new RR Lyrae stars. The reddening and extinction toward all the RRab stars in this tile were derived, and distance estimations were obtained through the period--luminosity relation. Despite the limited amount of RR Lyrae stars studied, our results are consistent with a spheroidal or central distribution around $\sim 8.1$ and $\sim 8.5$ kpc. for either the Cardelli or Nishiyama extinction law.

10 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics

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• New type II Cepheids from VVV data towards the Galactic center
• The VVV Infrared Variability Catalog (VIVA-I)
• Deep PSF photometric catalog of the VVV survey data