Abstract
Cepheids are key to establishing the cosmic distance scale. Therefore it’s important to assess the viability of QZ Nor, V340 Nor, and GU Nor as calibrators for Leavitt’s law via their purported membership in the open cluster NGC 6067. The following suite of evidence confirms that QZ Nor and V340 Nor are members of NGC 6067, whereas GU Nor likely lies in the foreground: (i) existing radial velocities for QZ Nor and V340 Nor agree with that established for the cluster (\(-39.4\pm0.2(\sigma_{\bar {x}}) \pm1.2 (\sigma)~\mbox{km/s}\)) to within 1 km/s, whereas GU Nor exhibits a markedly smaller value; (ii) a steep velocity-distance gradient characterizes the sight-line toward NGC 6067, thus implying that objects sharing common velocities are nearly equidistant; (iii) a radial profile constructed for NGC 6067 indicates that QZ Nor is within the cluster bounds, despite being 20′ from the cluster center; (iv) new BVJH photometry for NGC 6067 confirms the cluster lies d=1.75±0.10 kpc distant, a result that matches Wesenheit distances computed for QZ Nor/V340 Nor using the Benedict et al. (Astron. J. 133:1810, 2007, HST parallaxes) calibration. QZ Nor is a cluster Cepheid that should be employed as a calibrator for the cosmic distance scale.
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Notes
The Cepheid period-luminosity (magnitude) relation.
Infrared surface brightness technique (Fouque and Gieren 1997).
Two Micron All Sky Survey.
VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea.
\(\sigma_{\bar{x}}\) and σ are the standard error and standard deviation, respectively.
The three Cepheids are assumed to follow the velocity-distance correlation, yet there exist stars that do not (e.g., binary interactions, peculiar motions).
Harvard 10 (J2000 16:18:48–54:56:00, Dias et al. 2002).
Recent observations imply that Cepheids are X-ray (low flux) emitters (Engle and Guinan 2012).
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Acknowledgements
DM is grateful to the following individuals and consortia whose efforts, advice, or encouragement enabled the research: Y. Efremov, H. Neilson, P. Moskalik, 2MASS (R. Cutri), A. Thackeray, A. Walker, I. Coulson, J. Caldwell, F. Kienzle, M. Metzger, M. Groenewegen, D. Bersier, F. Pont, J.-C. Mermilliod, HIP (F. van Leeuwen), HST (F. Benedict, B. McArthur), OGLE (A. Udalski, I. Soszyñski), B. Skiff, D. Balam, WEBDA (E. Paunzen, J-C. Mermilliod), W. Dias, Spitzer, WISE, CDS (F. Ochsenbein, T. Boch, P. Fernique), arXiv, and NASA ADS. WG, DG, and D. Minniti are grateful for support from the BASAL Centro de Astrofisica y Tecnologias Afines (CATA) PFB-06/2007. MS acknowledges support by Fondecyt project No. 3110188. Support for JB is provided by the Chilean Ministry for the Economy, Development, and Tourism’s Programa Iniciativa Científica Milenio through grant P07-021-F, awarded to The Milky Way Millennium Nucleus and Fondecyt Regular No. 1120601.
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Majaess, D., Sturch, L., Moni Bidin, C. et al. Anchors for the cosmic distance scale: the Cepheid QZ Normae in the open cluster NGC 6067. Astrophys Space Sci 347, 61–70 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-013-1495-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10509-013-1495-1