Hubble Space Telescope Fine Guidance Sensor Parallaxes of Galactic Cepheid Variable Stars: Period-Luminosity Relations

By G. Benedict, B. Mcarthur, M. Feast, T. Barnes, T. Harrison, R. Patterson, J. Menzies, J. Bean, W. Freedman. 2006

280 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present new absolute trigonometric parallaxes and relative proper motions for nine Galactic Cepheid variable stars: ℓ Car, ζ Gem, β Dor, W Sgr, X Sgr, Y Sgr, FF Aql, T Vul, and RT Aur. We obtain these results with astrometric data from Fine Guidance Sensor 1r, a white-light interferometer on the Hubble Space Telescope. We find absolute parallaxes in milliarcseconds: ℓ Car, 2.01 ± 0.20 mas; ζ Gem, 2.78 ± 0.18 mas; β Dor, 3.14 ± 0.16 mas; W Sgr, 2.28 ± 0.20 mas; X Sgr, 3.00 ± 0.18 mas; Y Sgr, 2.13 ± 0.29 mas; FF Aql, 2.81 ± 0.18 mas; T Vul, 1.90 ± 0.23 mas; and RT Aur, 2.40 ± 0.19 mas; average σπ/π = 8%. Two stars (FF Aql and W Sgr) required the inclusion of binary astrometric perturbations, providing Cepheid mass estimates. With these parallaxes we compute absolute magnitudes in V, I, K, and Wesenheit WVI bandpasses, corrected for interstellar extinction and Lutz-Kelker-Hanson bias. Adding our previous absolute magnitude determination for δ Cep, we construct period-luminosity relations (PLRs) for 10 Galactic Cepheids. We compare our new PLRs with those adopted by several recent investigations, including the Freedman and Sandage H0 projects. Adopting our PLR would tend to increase the Sandage H0 value, but leave the Freedman H0 unchanged. Comparing our Galactic Cepheid PLR with those derived from LMC Cepheids, we find the slopes for K and WVI to be identical in the two galaxies within their respective errors. Our data lead to a WVI distance modulus for the LMC m - M = 18.50 ± 0.03, uncorrected for any metallicity effects. Applying recently derived metallicity corrections yields a corrected LMC distance modulus of (m - M)0 = 18.40 ± 0.05. Comparing our PLR to solar-metallicity Cepheids in NGC 4258 results in a distance modulus 29.28 ± 0.08 that agrees with one derived from maser studies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

THE SOLAR NEIGHBORHOOD. XXXVII. THE MASS–LUMINOSITY RELATION FOR MAIN-SEQUENCE M DWARFS (2016, methodology): “As for of our previous parallax projects, e.g., Benedict et al. (2007, 2009, 2011); McArthur et al. (2011) we include as much prior information as possible for our modeling.”
A REDETERMINATION OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE FROM A DIFFERENTIAL DISTANCE LADDER (2009, methodology): “In §4, we independently test the use of the distance to NGC 4258 by adopting the individual parallax measurements of Galactic Cepheids from Benedict et al. (2007).”
A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km s−1 Mpc−1 Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team (2021, methodology): “We do not use the sample from Benedict et al. (2007) that was part of R16 because their fluxes are too bright (0<mH< 3 mag) to be measured directly with HST nor have they been measured with good accuracy from the ground; the parallax sample from Gaia EDR3 provides superior information on MW…”
CLUSTERING OF LOCAL GROUP DISTANCES: PUBLICATION BIAS OR CORRELATED MEASUREMENTS? III. THE SMALL MAGELLANIC CLOUD (2014, background): “Hubble Space Telescope-based parallaxes are less seriously affected by these parallax errors (e.g., Benedict et al. 2002, 2007) than the earlier Hipparcos measurements, although the revised Hipparcos parallaxes (van Leeuwen 2007) provide a significantly improved calibration data set.9 In the…”
A 3% SOLUTION: DETERMINATION OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE AND WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3 (2011, methodology): “An alternative analysis using the Benedict et al. (2007) parallax measurements of Milky Way (MW) Cepheids in lieu of the megamaser distance to NGC 4258 showed good agreement, with comparable 5.5% precision.”
New Parallaxes of Galactic Cepheids from Spatially Scanning the Hubble Space Telescope: Implications for the Hubble Constant (2018, methodology): “This is a factor of 45 better than the ESA astrometric mission Hipparcos mean for all P>10 day MW Cepheids (σ= 1.4 mas; van Leeuwen et al. 2007), and an order of magnitude better than typically possible with the FGS on HST or from staring mode observations with WFC3.”
A New Calibration Of Galactic Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relations From B To K Bands, And A Comparison To LMC Relations (2007, methodology): “We use two sources of trigonometric parallaxes: HST parallaxes, published by Benedict et al. (2002) and Benedict et al. (2007), and the revised Hipparcos parallaxes of Cepheids, from van Leeuwen et al. (2007).”
ASTROPHYSICAL TESTS OF MODIFIED GRAVITY: CONSTRAINTS FROM DISTANCE INDICATORS IN THE NEARBY UNIVERSE (2012, background): “…(18) There are several caveats to the above tabulation, especially for the cepheid distance, which does not include systematic errors, but a full discussion is beyond the scope of this article (see Benedict et al. 2007; di Benedetto 2008; Mager et al. 2008 for recent cepheid distance estimates).”
A 2.4% DETERMINATION OF THE LOCAL VALUE OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT (2016, methodology): “R11 subsequently improved this measurement to 3.3% by increasing to 8 the number of Cepheid distances to reliable SNIa hosts, and formally including HST/FGS trigonometric parallaxes of 10 Milky Way (MW) Cepheids with distance D<0.5 kpc and individual precision of 8% (Benedict et al. 2007).”
AGB variables and the Mira period–luminosity relation (2008, methodology): “This is evaluated (on the model used by Benedict et al. (2007)) as: LK = −8.09(σπ/π)2, and it makes them up to 0.2 mag brighter than they would otherwise be.”
Hubble Space Telescope Trigonometric Parallax of Polaris B, Companion of the Nearest Cepheid (2017, methodology): “The FGS system has been shown capable of yielding trigonometric parallaxes, in favorable cases, with better than±0.2mas precision (e.g., Benedict et al. 2007, hereafter B07; Soderblom et al. 2005; Benedict et al. 2011, 2017; McArthur et al. 2011; Bond et al. 2013).”