Young and Intermediate-age Distance Indicators

Abstract

Distance measurements beyond geometrical and semi-geometrical methods, rely mainly on standard candles. As the name suggests, these objects have known luminosities by virtue of their intrinsic proprieties and play a major role in our understanding of modern cosmology. The main caveats associated with standard candles are their absolute calibration, contamination of the sample from other sources and systematic uncertainties. The absolute calibration mainly depends on their chemical composition and age. To understand the impact of these effects on the distance scale, it is essential to develop methods based on different sample of standard candles. Here we review the fundamental properties of young and intermediate-age distance indicators such as Cepheids, Mira variables and Red Clump stars and the recent developments in their application as distance indicators.

Review article, 63 pages (28 figures), Accepted for publication in Space Science Reviews (Chapter 3 of a special collection resulting from the May 2016 ISSI-BJ workshop on Astronomical Distance Determination in the Space Age)

References in corpus (35)

• An eclipsing binary distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud accurate to 2 per cent
• The APOKASC Catalog: An Asteroseismic and Spectroscopic Joint Survey of Targets in the Kepler Fields
• Direct Detection of the Close Companion of Polaris with the Hubble Space Telescope
• The APOGEE red-clump catalog: Precise distances, velocities, and high-resolution elemental abundances over a large area of the Milky Way's disk
• Revealing δ Cephei's Secret Companion and Intriguing Past
• The influence of chemical composition on the properties of Cepheid stars. II-The iron content
• A new calibration of Galactic Cepheid Period-Luminosity relations from B to K bands, and a comparison to LMC PL relations
• Cepheid Parallaxes and the Hubble Constant
• Clustering of Local Group distances: publication bias or correlated measurements? I. The Large Magellanic Cloud
• The Mid-Infrared Extinction Law in the Ophiuchus, Perseus, and Serpens Molecular Clouds
• New Optical Reddening Maps of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds
• The LAMOST Stellar Parameter Pipeline at Peking University --- LSP3
• LAMOST Spectroscopic Survey of the Galactic Anti-centre (LSS-GAC): target selection and the first release of value-added catalogues
• Clustering of Local Group distances: publication bias or correlated measurements? III. The Small Magellanic Cloud
• The VMC Survey - XIV. First results on the look-back time star-formation rate tomography of the Small Magellanic Cloud
• Neutrinos help reconcile Planck measurements with both Early and Local Universe
• Weighing the local dark matter with RAVE red clump stars
• On the distance of the Magellanic Clouds using Cepheid NIR and optical-NIR Period Wesenheit Relations
• On the effect of rotation on populations of classical Cepheids I. Predictions at solar metallicity
• A large sample of calibration stars for Gaia: log g from Kepler and CoRoT
• Classical Cepheid Pulsation Models. XI. Effects of convection and chemical composition on the Period-Luminosity and Period-Wesenheit relations
• The panchromatic view of the Magellanic Clouds from Classical Cepheids. I. Distance, Reddening and Geometry of the Large Magellanic Cloud disk
• New NIR light-curve templates for classical Cepheids
• Improved VLBI astrometry of OH maser stars
• A lack of classical Cepheids in the inner part of the Galactic disk
• Oxygen, α-element and iron abundance distributions in the inner part of the Galactic thin disc
• On the Variation of Fourier Parameters for Galactic and LMC Cepheids at Optical, Near-Infrared and Mid-Infrared Wavelengths
• The Period-Luminosity Relation for the Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheids Derived from Spitzer Archival Data
• A New Cepheid Distance Measurement and Method for NGC 6822
• Inferring the three-dimensional distribution of dust in the Galaxy with a non-parametric method: Preparing for Gaia
• Testing the nonlinearity of the BVIcJHKs period-luminosity relations for the Large Magellanic Cloud Cepheids
• Oxygen, $\alpha$-element and iron abundance distributions in the inner part of the Galactic thin disc. II
• RR Lyrae variables in the Small Magellanic Cloud - II. The extended area: chemical and structural analysis
• Parallax of a Mira variable R Ursae Majoris studied with astrometric VLBI
• VLBI Astrometry of AGB Variables with VERA -- A Mira Type Variable T Lepus