J/ApJ/838/107 Distances to RRab stars from WISE and Gaia (Sesar+, 2017)
A probabilistic approach to fitting period-luminosity relations and validating
Gaia parallaxes.
Sesar B., Fouesneau M., Price-Whelan A.M., Bailer-Jones C.A.L., Gould A.,
Rix H.-W.
<Astrophys. J., 838, 107-107 (2017)>
=2017ApJ...838..107S 2017ApJ...838..107S (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Stars, variable ; Stars, distances ; Infrared sources
Keywords: methods: data analysis; methods: statistical; parallaxes;
stars: variables: RR Lyrae
Abstract:
Pulsating stars, such as Cepheids, Miras, and RR Lyrae stars, are
important distance indicators and calibrators of the "cosmic distance
ladder," and yet their period-luminosity-metallicity (PLZ) relations
are still constrained using simple statistical methods that cannot
take full advantage of available data. To enable optimal usage of data
provided by the Gaia mission, we present a probabilistic approach that
simultaneously constrains parameters of PLZ relations and
uncertainties in Gaia parallax measurements. We demonstrate this
approach by constraining PLZ relations of type ab RR Lyrae stars in
near-infrared W1 and W2 bands, using Tycho-Gaia Astrometric Solution
(TGAS) parallax measurements for a sample of ∼100 type ab RR Lyrae
stars located within 2.5kpc of the Sun. The fitted PLZ relations are
consistent with previous studies, and in combination with other data,
deliver distances precise to 6% (once various sources of uncertainty
are taken into account). To a precision of 0.05mas (1σ), we do
not find a statistically significant offset in TGAS parallaxes for
this sample of distant RR Lyrae stars (median parallax of 0.8mas and
distance of 1.4kpc). With only minor modifications, our probabilistic
approach can be used to constrain PLZ relations of other pulsating
stars, and we intend to apply it to Cepheid and Mira stars in the near
future.
Description:
To constrain the period-luminosity-metallicity (PLZ) relations for RR
Lyrae stars in WISE W1 and W2 bands, we use TGAS trigonometric
parallaxes (barω), spectroscopic metallicities ([Fe/H]; Fernley+
1998, J/A+A/330/515), log-periods (logP, base 10), and apparent
magnitudes (m; Klein+ 2014, J/MNRAS/440/L96) for 102 RRab stars within
∼2.5kpc from the Sun. The E(B-V) reddening at a star's position is
obtained from the Schlegel+ (1998ApJ...500..525S 1998ApJ...500..525S) dust map.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table2.dat 22 118 Distances to RR Lyrae Stars
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See also:
II/311 : WISE All-Sky Data Release (Cutri+ 2012)
I/337 : Gaia DR1 (Gaia Collaboration, 2016)
J/A+A/330/515 : RR Lyrae parallaxes & proper motions (Fernley+ 1998)
J/AJ/142/187 : HST obs. of 7 Pop.II variable stars (Benedict+, 2011)
J/ApJ/776/26 : RRab stars in the Orphan stream distances (Sesar+, 2013)
J/MNRAS/439/3765 : RR Lyrae in 15 Galactic globular clusters (Dambis+, 2014)
J/MNRAS/441/715 : Mid-infrared study of RR Lyrae stars (Gavrilchenko+, 2014)
J/MNRAS/440/L96 : RR Lyrae AllWise photometry (Klein+, 2014)
J/ApJ/832/L18 : Gaia's DR1 parallaxes vs previous measurements (Jao+, 2016)
J/ApJ/831/L6 : Eclipsing binary parallaxes with Gaia data (Stassun+, 2016)
J/A+A/605/A79 : TGAS Cepheids and RR Lyrae stars (Gaia Collaboration+, 2017)
http://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/ : Gaia home page
http://www.univie.ac.at/tops/blazhko/Blazhkolist.html : List of known
RR Lyrae Blazhko stars
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table2.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 7 A7 --- Name RR Lyrae identifier
9 A1 --- f_Name [*] Flag on Name (1)
12- 16 F5.1 pc Dist [4/993] Heliocentric distance
18- 22 F5.1 pc e_Dist [10/167] Uncertainty in Dist
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Note (1):
* = A RRc star. These distances may be biased, see Section 4.3.
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 31-Oct-2017