Münchner Physik Kolloquium: Stellar candles for the extragalactic distance scale

by Wolfgang Gieren (Department of Astronomy Universidad Concepcion, Chile)

Monday 9 May 2011, 17:15 → 18:45 Europe/Berlin

Hörsaal 2 (Physik Department der TUM, Garching)

Both the accurate determination of the distances to remote galaxies and cosmological parameters, and precision stellar astrophysics in galaxies beyond our own Milky Way require as a first step an accurate measurement of the distances to nearby galaxies out to 10 Megaparsecs. I will discuss two of the currently most important stellar techniques to achieve this first step of the cosmic distance ladder: the pulsating Cepheid variable stars which obey a universal (?) Period-Luminosity relation and whose distances can also directly be measured with the Baade-Wesselink method, and eclipsing binary systems composed of late-type giant stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud which have the potential to set the zero point of the cosmic distance scale to an accuracy of 1%.