Pulsating stars and the distance scale - Texas A&M University (TAMU) Scholar

2017 The Authors, published by EDP Sciences. I present an overview of the latest results from the SH0ES project, which obtained homogeneous Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photometry in the optical and near-infrared for 3500 and 2300 Cepheids, respectively, across 19 supernova hosts and 4 calibrators to determine the value of H 0 with a total uncertainty of 2.4%. I discuss the current 3.4 "tension" between this local measurement and predictions of H 0 based on observations of the CMB and the assumption of "standard" CDM. I review ongoing efforts to reach (H 0 ) = 1%, including recent advances on the absolute calibration of Milky Way Cepheid period-luminosity relations (PLRs) using a novel astrometric technique with HST. Lastly, I highlight recent results from another collaboration on the development of new statistical techniques to detect, classify and phase extragalactic Miras using noisy and sparsely-sampled observations. I present preliminary Mira PLRs at various wavelengths based on the application of these techniques to a survey of M33.

Pulsating stars and the distance scale Conference Paper