No Arabic abstract
HIPPARCOS astrometric and kinematical data of oxygen-rich Mira variables are used to calibrate absolute near-infrared magnitudes and kinematic parameters. Two sets of near-infrared magnitudes compiled from different authors are used: broad-band K and narrow-band photometric measurements at 1.04 micron (104 filter). Three distinct classes of stars with different kinematics and scale height have been identified. The two most significant groups present characteristics close to the ones usually assigned to extended/thick disk-halo population and old disk population respectively, and thus they might differ by their metallicity abundance. They exhibit different period distributions, as expected if these two groups actually correspond to populations of distinct initial masses, ages and metallicities. Two parallel period-luminosity relations are found in K as well as in 104, one for each significant population. The shift between these relations is interpreted as the consequence of the effects of metallicity abundance on the luminosity.
In this paper we confirm the existence of period-luminosity (PL) and period-luminosity-colour (PLC) relations at maximum light for O and C Mira variables in the LMC. We demonstrate that in the J and H bands the maximum light PL relations have a significantly smaller dispersion than their counterparts at mean light, while the K band and bolometric PL relations have a dispersion comparable to that at mean light. In the J, H and K bands the fitted PL relations for the O Miras are found to have smaller dispersion than those for the C Miras, at both mean and maximum light, while the converse is true for the relations based on bolometric magnitudes. The inclusion of a non-zero log period term is found to be highly significant in all cases except that of the C Miras in the J band, for which the data are found to be consistent with having constant absolute magnitude. This suggests the possibility of employing C Miras as standard candles. We suggest both a theoretical justification for the existence of Mira PL relations at maximum light and a possible explanation of why these relations should have a smaller dispersion than at mean light. The existence of such maximum light relations offers the possibility of extending the range and improving the accuracy of the Mira distance scale to Galactic globular clusters and to other galaxies.
We present Period-Luminosity and Period-Luminosity-Color relations at maximum-light for Mira variables in the Magellanic Clouds using time-series data from the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE-III) and {it Gaia} data release 2. The maximum-light relations exhibit a scatter typically up to $sim 30%$ smaller than their mean-light counterparts. The apparent magnitudes of Oxygen-rich Miras at maximum-light display significantly smaller cycle-to-cycle variations than at minimum-light. High-precision photometric data for Kepler Mira candidates also exhibit stable magnitude variations at the brightest epochs while their multi-epoch spectra display strong Balmer emission lines and weak molecular absorption at maximum-light. The stability of maximum-light magnitudes for Miras possibly occurs due to the decrease in the sensitivity to molecular bands at their warmest phase. At near-infrared wavelengths, the Period-Luminosity relations of Miras display similar dispersion at mean and maximum-light with limited time-series data in the Magellanic Clouds. A kink in the Oxygen-rich Mira Period-Luminosity relations is found at 300 days in the $VI$-bands which shifts to longer-periods ($sim 350$~days) at near-infrared wavelengths. Oxygen-rich Mira Period-Luminosity relations at maximum-light provide a relative distance modulus, $Delta mu = 0.48pm0.08$~mag, between the Magellanic Clouds with a smaller statistical uncertainty than the mean-light relations. The maximum-light properties of Miras can be very useful for stellar atmosphere modeling and distance scale studies provided their stability and the universality can be established in other stellar environments in the era of extremely large telescopes.
The Period--Luminosity relation (PLR) of Mira variable stars is an important tool to determine astronomical distances. The common approach of estimating the PLR is a two-step procedure that first estimates the Mira periods and then runs a linear regression of magnitude on log period. When the light curves are sparse and noisy, the accuracy of period estimation decreases and can suffer from aliasing effects. Some methods improve accuracy by incorporating complex model structures at the expense of significant computational costs. Another drawback of existing methods is that they only provide point estimation without proper estimation of uncertainty. To overcome these challenges, we develop a hierarchical Bayesian model that simultaneously models the quasi-periodic variations for a collection of Mira light curves while estimating their common PLR. By borrowing strengths through the PLR, our method automatically reduces the aliasing effect, improves the accuracy of period estimation, and is capable of characterizing the estimation uncertainty. We develop a scalable stochastic variational inference algorithm for computation that can effectively deal with the multimodal posterior of period. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through simulations, and an application to observations of Miras in the Local Group galaxy M33. Without using ad-hoc period correction tricks, our method achieves a distance estimate of M33 that is consistent with published work. Our method also shows superior robustness to downsampling of the light curves.
We present new near-infrared ($JHK_s$) time-series observations of RR Lyrae variables in the Messier 3 (NGC 5272) globular cluster using the WIRCam instrument at the 3.6-m Canada France Hawaii Telescope. Our observations cover a sky area of $sim 21times 21$ around the cluster center and provide an average of twenty epochs of homogeneous $JHK_s$-band photometry. New homogeneous photometry is used to estimate robust mean magnitudes for 175 fundamental-mode (RRab), 47 overtone-mode (RRc), and 11 mixed-mode (RRd) variables. Our sample of 233 RR Lyrae variables is the largest thus far obtained in a single cluster with time-resolved, multi-band near-infrared photometry. Near-infrared to optical amplitude ratios for RR Lyrae in Messier 3 exhibit a systematic increase moving from RRc to short-period ($P < 0.6$~days) and long-period ($P gtrsim 0.6$~days) RRab variables. We derive $JHK_s$-band Period--Luminosity relations for RRab, RRc, and the combined sample of variables. Absolute calibrations based on the theoretically predicted Period--Luminosity--Metallicity relations for RR Lyrae stars yield a distance modulus, $mu = 15.041 pm 0.017~(textrm{statistical}) pm 0.036~(textrm{systematic})$~mag, to Messier 3. When anchored to trigonometric parallaxes for nearby RR Lyrae stars from the {it Hubble Space Telescope} and the {it Gaia} mission, our distance estimates are consistent with those resulting from the theoretical calibrations, albeit with relatively larger systematic uncertainties.
We study the near-infrared properties of 690 Mira candidates in the central region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, based on time-series observations at JHKs. We use densely-sampled I-band observations from the OGLE project to generate template light curves in the near infrared and derive robust mean magnitudes at those wavelengths. We obtain near-infrared Period-Luminosity relations for Oxygen-rich Miras with a scatter as low as 0.12 mag at Ks. We study the Period-Luminosity-Color relations and the color excesses of Carbon-rich Miras, which show evidence for a substantially different reddening law.