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Published January 20, 2019 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Precision Distances to Dwarf Galaxies and Globular Clusters from Pan-STARRS1 3π RR Lyrae

Abstract

We present new spatial models and distance estimates for globular clusters and dwarf spheroidals orbiting our Galaxy based on RR Lyrae (RRab) stars in the Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) 3π survey. Using the PS1 sample of RRab stars from Sesar et al. in 16 globular clusters and 5 dwarf galaxies, we fit structural models in (l, b, D) space; for 13 globular clusters and 6 dwarf galaxies, we give only their mean heliocentric distance D. We verify the accuracy of the period–luminosity relations used in Sesar et al. to constrain the distance to those stars, and compare them to period–luminosity–metallicity relations using metallicities from Carretta et al. We compare our Sesar et al. distances to the parallax-based Gaia DR2 distance estimates from Bailer-Jones et al. and find our distances to be consistent and considerably more precise.

Additional Information

© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2018 September 21; revised 2018 November 19; accepted 2018 November 20; published 2019 January 21. H.-W.R. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP 7) ERC grant Agreement No. [321035]. The Pan-STARRS1 Surveys (PS1) have been made possible through contributions of the Institute for Astronomy, the University of Hawaii, the Pan-STARRS Project Office, the Max-Planck Society and its participating institutes, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, The Johns Hopkins University, Durham University, the University of Edinburgh, Queen's University Belfast, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network Incorporated, the National Central University of Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant No. NNX08AR22G issued through the Planetary Science Division of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, the National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-1238877, the University of Maryland, and Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE) and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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Published - Hernitschek_2019_ApJ_871_49.pdf

Submitted - 1811.10808.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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