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Probability density functions are determined from new stellar parameters for the distance moduli of stars for which the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) has obtained spectra with S/N>=10. Single-Gaussian fits to the pdf in distance modulus suffice for roughly half the stars, with most of the other half having satisfactory two-Gaussian representations. As expected, early-type stars rarely require more than one Gaussian. The expectation value of distance is larger than the distance implied by the expectation of distance modulus; the latter is itself larger than the distance implied by the expectation value of the parallax. Our parallaxes of Hipparcos stars agree well with the values measured by Hipparcos, so the expectation of parallax is the most reliable distance indicator. The latter are improved by taking extinction into account. The effective temperature absolute-magnitude diagram of our stars is significantly improved when these pdfs are used to make the diagram. We use the method of kinematic corrections devised by Schoenrich, Binney & Asplund to check for systematic errors for general stars and confirm that the most reliable distance indicator is the expectation of parallax. For cool dwarfs and low-gravity giants <pi> tends to be larger than the true distance by up to 30 percent. The most satisfactory distances are for dwarfs hotter than 5500 K. We compare our distances to stars in 13 open clusters with cluster distances from the literature and find excellent agreement for the dwarfs and indications that we are over-estimating distances to giants, especially in young clusters.
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We test two different methods of using near-infrared extinction to estimate distances to dark clouds in the first quadrant of the Galaxy using large near infrared (2MASS and UKIDSS) surveys. VLBI parallax measurements of masers around massive young stars provide the most direct and bias-free measurement of the distance to these dark clouds. We compare the extinction distance estimates to these maser parallax distances. We also compare these distances to kinematic distances, including recent re-calibrations of the Galactic rotation curve. The extinction distance methods agree with the maser parallax distances (within the errors) between 66% and 100% of the time (depending on method and input survey) and between 85% and 100% of the time outside of the crowded Galactic center. Although the sample size is small, extinction distance methods reproduce maser parallax distances better than kinematic distances; furthermore, extinction distance methods do not suffer from the kinematic distance ambiguity. This validation gives us confidence that these extinction methods may be extended to additional dark clouds where maser parallaxes are not available.
PHANGS-HST is an ultraviolet-optical imaging survey of 38 spiral galaxies within ~20 Mpc. Combined with the PHANGS-ALMA, PHANGS-MUSE surveys and other multiwavelength data, the dataset will provide an unprecedented look into the connections between young stars, HII regions, and cold molecular gas in these nearby star-forming galaxies. Accurate distances are needed to transform measured observables into physical parameters (e.g., brightness to luminosity, angular to physical sizes of molecular clouds, star clusters and associations). PHANGS-HST has obtained parallel ACS imaging of the galaxy halos in the F606W and F814W bands. Where possible, we use these parallel fields to derive tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) distances to these galaxies. In this paper, we present TRGB distances for 11 galaxies from ~4 to ~15 Mpc, based on the first year of PHANGS-HST observations. Five of these represent the first published TRGB distance measurements (IC 5332, NGC 2835, NGC 4298, NGC 4321, and NGC 4328), and eight of which are the best available distances to these targets. We also provide a compilation of distances for the 118 galaxies in the full PHANGS sample, which have been adopted for the first PHANGS-ALMA public data release.
We present a method to estimate distances to stars with spectroscopically derived stellar parameters. The technique is a Bayesian approach with likelihood estimated via comparison of measured parameters to a grid of stellar isochrones, and returns a posterior probability density function for each stars absolute magnitude. This technique is tailored specifically to data from the Large Sky Area Multi-object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) survey. Because LAMOST obtains roughly 3000 stellar spectra simultaneously within each ~5-degree diameter plate that is observed, we can use the stellar parameters of the observed stars to account for the stellar luminosity function and target selection effects. This removes biasing assumptions about the underlying populations, both due to predictions of the luminosity function from stellar evolution modeling, and from Galactic models of stellar populations along each line of sight. Using calibration data of stars with known distances and stellar parameters, we show that our method recovers distances for most stars within ~20%, but with some systematic overestimation of distances to halo giants. We apply our code to the LAMOST database, and show that the current precision of LAMOST stellar parameters permits measurements of distances with ~40% error bars. This precision should improve as the LAMOST data pipelines continue to be refined.
We use the kinematics of $sim200,000$ giant stars that lie within $sim 1.5$ kpc of the plane to measure the vertical profile of mass density near the Sun. We find that the dark mass contained within the isodensity surface of the dark halo that passes through the Sun ($(6pm0.9)times10^{10},mathrm{M_odot}$), and the surface density within $0.9$ kpc of the plane ($(69pm10),mathrm{M_odot,pc^{-2}}$) are almost independent of the (oblate) halos axis ratio $q$. If the halo is spherical, 46 per cent of the radial force on the Sun is provided by baryons, and only 4.3 per cent of the Galaxys mass is baryonic. If the halo is flattened, the baryons contribute even less strongly to the local radial force and to the Galaxys mass. The dark-matter density at the location of the Sun is $0.0126,q^{-0.89},mathrm{M_odot,pc^{-3}}=0.48,q^{-0.89},mathrm{GeV,cm^{-3}}$. When combined with other literature results we find hints for a mildly oblate dark halo with $q simeq 0.8$. Our value for the dark mass within the solar radius is larger than that predicted by cosmological dark-matter-only simulations but in good agreement with simulations once the effects of baryonic infall are taken into account. Our mass models consist of three double-exponential discs, an oblate bulge and a Navarro-Frenk-White dark-matter halo, and we model the dynamics of the RAVE stars in the corresponding gravitational fields by finding distribution functions $f(mathbf{J})$ that depend on three action integrals. Statistical errors are completely swamped by systematic uncertainties, the most important of which are the distance to the stars in the photometric and spectroscopic samples and the solar distance to the Galactic centre. Systematics other than the flattening of the dark halo yield overall uncertainties $sim 15$ per cent.
We present a method for obtaining the likelihood function of distance and extinction to a star given its photometry. The other properties of the star (its mass, age, metallicity and so on) are marginalised assuming a simple Galaxy model. We demonstrate that the resulting marginalised likelihood function can be described faithfully and compactly using a Gaussian mixture model. For dust mapping applications we strongly advocate using monochromatic over bandpass extinctions, and provide tables for converting from the former to the latter for different stellar types.
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