J/ApJ/857/67 HST obs. of Mira candidates in NGC 4258 (Huang+, 2018)
A near-infrared period-luminosity relation for Miras in NGC 4258, an anchor for
a new distance ladder.
Huang C.D., Riess A.G., Hoffmann S.L., Klein C., Bloom J., Yuan W.,
Macri L.M., Jones D.O., Whitelock P.A., Casertano S., Anderson R.I.
<Astrophys. J., 857, 67 (2018)>
=2018ApJ...857...67H 2018ApJ...857...67H
ADC_Keywords: Stars, variable; Photometry, HST; Photometry, infrared
Keywords: cosmology: observations; distance scale;
galaxies: individual (NGC 4258); stars: variables: general
Abstract:
We present year-long, near-infrared (NIR) Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
WFC3 observations of Mira variables in the water megamaser host galaxy
NGC 4258. Miras are asymptotic giant branch variables that can be
divided into oxygen- (O-) and carbon- (C-) rich subclasses.
Oxygen-rich Miras follow a tight (scatter ∼0.14mag) period-luminosity
relation (PLR) in the NIR and can be used to measure extragalactic
distances. The water megamaser in NGC 4258 gives a geometric distance
to the galaxy accurate to 2.6% that can serve to calibrate the Mira
PLR. We develop criteria for detecting and classifying O-rich Miras
with optical and NIR data as well as NIR data alone. In total, we
discover 438 Mira candidates that we classify with high confidence as
O-rich. Our most stringent criteria produce a sample of 139 Mira
candidates that we use to measure a PLR. We use the OGLE-III sample of
O-rich Miras in the Large Magellanic Cloud to obtain a relative
distance modulus, µ4258-µLMC=10.95±0.01 (statistical)
±0.06 (systematic) mag, that is statistically consistent with the
relative distance determined using Cepheids. These results demonstrate
the feasibility of discovering and characterizing Miras using the NIR
with the HST and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope and using
those Miras to measure extragalactic distances and determine the
Hubble constant.
Description:
With a roughly monthly observational cadence, we used 12 epochs of HST
WFC3 data (GO 13445; PI: Bloom) collected between 2013 October 2 and
2014 August 3 to search for Miras in NGC 4258. All 12 epochs have
F160W and F125W data. The observations were centered at
RAJ2000=12:18:52.800 and DEJ2000=+47:20:19.70.
This field was previously observed in F160W (GO 11570; PI: Riess) in
2009 December and 2010 May. These earlier images were taken to create
a mosaic of NGC 4258 in F160W.
This field was previously observed at optical wavelengths using HST
(GO 9810; PI: Greenhill Macri+ 2006, J/ApJ/652/1133). These
observations were taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in
F435W, F555W, and F814W. The optical time-series consisted of 12
epochs between 2003 December 5 and 2004 January 19.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table2.dat 62 44 Secondary standards used to calibrate
the F160W light curves
table6.dat 80 388 Final sample of Miras
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See also:
B/hst : HST Archived Exposures Catalog (STScI, 2007)
II/288 : IRSF Magellanic Clouds Point Source Catalog (Kato+ 2007)
II/195 : Namelists of variable stars Nos.67-73 (Khopolov+, 1985-97)
J/A+AS/13/133 : UBV observations of Mira variables (Koester+, 1974)
J/A+AS/120/275 : Mira variables light curves (Alard+ 1996)
J/A+AS/146/217 : Library of Spectra (0.5-2.5um) of Cool Stars (Lancon+ 2000)
J/A+A/377/945 : Variability and spectra of LMC giants (Cioni+ 2001)
J/A+A/384/925 : Compiled cat. of stellar data of Miras (Kharchenko+, 2002)
J/A+A/406/51 : ISO long period variables in SMC (Cioni+, 2003)
J/ApJ/620/961 : Diameters of Mira stars in JHK' bands (Millan-Gabet+, 2005)
J/ApJ/652/1133 : BVI photometry of NGC 4258 Cepheids (Macri+, 2006)
J/MNRAS/369/751 : Near-infrared photometry of carbon stars (Whitelock+, 2006)
J/ApJ/660/1486 : Variability of LMC semiregular variables (Soszynski+, 2007)
J/AJ/136/1242 : LMC long-period variables from MACHO (Fraser+, 2008)
J/AcA/58/163 : VI light curves of LMC classical Cepheids (Soszynski+, 2008)
J/AcA/58/293 : Type-II and anomalous Cepheids in LMC (Soszynski+, 2008)
J/MNRAS/386/313 : IR observations of Mira variables (Whitelock+, 2008)
J/A+A/503/913 : Synthetic spectrophot. for C-rich giants (Aringer+, 2009)
J/MNRAS/399/1709 : Near-infrared survey of Miras (Matsunaga+, 2009)
J/MNRAS/399/2063 : LMC red giants in D sequence (Nicholls+, 2009)
J/AcA/59/1 : VI light curves of LMC RR Lyrae stars (Soszynski+, 2009)
J/AcA/59/239 : VI LCs of LMC long-period variables (Soszynski+, 2009)
J/AcA/59/335 : VI light curves of LMC R CBr stars (Soszynski+, 2009)
J/MNRAS/394/795 : AGB stars in Fornax dSph galaxy (Whitelock+, 2009)
J/ApJ/715/277 : Insights into the Cepheid distance scale (Bono+, 2010)
J/AcA/60/179 : VI LCs of LMC double periodic variables (Poleski+, 2010)
J/AcA/60/1 : VI light curves of LMC delta Scuti stars (Poleski+, 2010)
J/ApJ/708/717 : Light curve templates of RR Lyrae stars (Sesar+, 2010)
J/AcA/61/217 : VI LCs of SMC long-period variables (Soszynski+, 2011)
J/AcA/63/21 : VI light curves of Galactic LPVs (Soszynski+, 2013)
J/A+A/576/A30 : NIR LC templates for classical Cepheids (Inno+, 2015)
J/ApJ/812/31 : Local Star Formation effects on type Ia SNe (Jones+, 2015)
J/AJ/149/117 : LMC IR survey. I. Photometry of Cepheids (Macri+, 2015)
J/ApJS/227/6 : LCs re-analysis of Mira variables in ASAS (Vogt+, 2016)
J/ApJ/826/56 : HST/WFC3 obs. of Cepheids in SN Ia host gal. (Riess+, 2016)
J/A+A/592/A42 : A study of dust nucleation in Mira. I. (Kaminski+, 2016)
J/AJ/153/154 : LMC NIR survey. IV. Type II Cepheids (Bhardwaj+, 2017)
J/MNRAS/465/4914 : R-band light curves of HE 0435-1223 (Bonvin+, 2017)
J/ApJ/851/152 : DUSTiNGS. IV. AGB spectral types with HST (Boyer+, 2017)
J/AJ/153/170 : M33 Synoptic Stellar Survey. II. Miras (Yuan+, 2017)
J/AJ/154/149 : LMC NIR synoptic survey. V. NIR phot. of Miras (Yuan+, 2017)
J/ApJS/232/16 : Mira stars discovered in LAMOST DR4 (Yao+, 2017)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table2.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1- 5 I5 --- ID [695/65132] Identification number
(<[HRH2018] NNNNN> in Simbad)
7- 8 I2 h RAh [12] Hour of Right Ascension (J2000)
10- 11 I2 min RAm [18] Minute of Right Ascension (J2000)
13- 18 F6.3 s RAs [40.7/54] Second of Right Ascension (J2000)
20- 20 A1 --- DE- [+] Sign of the Declination (J2000)
21- 22 I2 deg DEd [47] Degree of Declination (J2000)
24- 25 I2 arcmin DEm [19/21] Arcminute of Declination (J2000)
27- 31 F5.2 arcsec DEs Arcsecond of Declination (J2000)
33- 40 F8.3 pix Xpix [335/1487] X pixel location on WFPC3 chip(s)
42- 49 F8.3 pix Ypix [13/1339] Y pixel location on WFPC3 chip(s)
51- 56 F6.3 mag F160W [19/21.1] HST/WFC3 F160W magnitude
58- 62 F5.3 mag e_F160W [0.009/0.02] F160W uncertainty
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: table6.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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2- 7 I6 --- ID [1488/271584] Identification number
(<[HRH2018] NNNNN> in Simbad)
9- 15 F7.3 d Per [115/300] Period
17- 18 I2 h RAh [12] Hour of Right Ascension (J2000)
20- 21 I2 min RAm [18] Minute of Right Ascension (J2000)
23- 28 F6.3 s RAs [40.7/54] Second of Right Ascension (J2000)
30- 30 A1 --- DE- [+] Sign of the Declination (J2000)
32- 33 I2 deg DEd [47] Degree of Declination (J2000)
35- 36 I2 arcmin DEm [19/21] Arcminute of Declination (J2000)
38- 42 F5.2 arcsec DEs Arcsecond of Declination (J2000)
44- 51 F8.3 pix Xpix [97/1627] X pixel location on WFPC3 chip(s)
53- 60 F8.3 pix Ypix [32/1521] Y pixel location on WFPC3 chip(s)
62- 67 F6.3 mag F160W [21.6/24.6] HST/WFC3 F160W magnitude
69- 73 F5.3 mag Amp [0.3/0.8] Amplitude in F160W
75- 80 A6 --- Qual Quality (1)
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Note (1): Quality as follows:
Bronze = Per<300days; 0.4<Amp<0.8mag; F125W-F160W<1.3 (127 occurrences);
Silver = Same as Bronze plus F814W detection (119 occurrences);
Gold = Same as Bronze plus slope-fit to F814W data >3σ
and F814W amplitude >0.3mag (142 occurrences).
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 20-Feb-2019