Post-Hipparcos Cosmic Candles

In May 1976, when one of us was temporarily associated with Stras bourg Observatory for lecturing on distance determination methods (Heck 1978), Pierre Lacroute - then in his last year as Director there - mod estly requested comments on a project he had been cherishing for quite a few years, and which he had been presenting to visitors and colleagues: an astrometric satellite. His persuasiveness and persistence won support from the scientific com munity, from the French space agency CNES and from the European Space Agency (ESA): the Hipparcos satellite was born. It was fitting that Lacroute lived long enough after his retirement to attend the launch of his brainchild in 1989 and to see it successfully operational. He knew however he would not enjoy the completion of this long and ambitious mission (he passed away on 14 January 1993, a few days before reaching the age of 87). In May 1997, in the prestigious setting of San Giorgio :Maggiore in Venice, ESA organized a symposium celebrating the presentation of the Hipparcos and Tycho catalogues. That conference signalled also the re lease of the first scientific results based at least partially on Hipparcos data. An impressive proceedings volume (Battrick 1997) of more than nine hundred pages, gathering together almost two hundred contributions, gave evidence of numerous studies in progress, in addition to papers starting to appear in the classical journals. The well-maintained ESA Hipparcos web site (http://astro. estec. esa.

Klappentext

This book is a timely first review since the dramatic change brought about in the field by the release of the Hipparcos catalogue. Chapters by leading experts detail the various approaches of one of the most challenging cosmological issues: the scale of the universe. After summarizing the contribution of the Hipparcos satellite itself, the volume starts with chapters concerning the primary distance indicators (Classical Cepheids, RR Lyrae stars, Miras, subdwarfs, ...). Then our present knowledge of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud is reviewed, as well as extragalactic distance determinations with a group of chapters dedicated to secondary indicators. The role of the microlensing surveys is also presented as well as the up-to-date results of stellar evolution theory, together with a frank admission of their limits! This book will be read by researchers and students active in determining cosmic distances, as well as by cosmologists, scientists and philosophers interested in the issue of the scale of the universe.

Inhalt
Hipparcos: A New Basis for Calibrating Distance Indicators.- Distance Determination with Cepheid Variables.- Absolute Magnitudes Derived Using the Statistical Parallax Method.- The RR Lyrae Distance Scale.- Mira Distances and their Use.- Distances and Ages of Globular Clusters using Hipparcos Parallaxes of Local Sub-dwarfs.- Globular Cluster Distance Determinations.- The Distances of the Magellanic Clouds.- Helium Core Flash and Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances.- Distances from the Planetary Nebulae Luminosity Function.- Distances from Surface Brightness Fluctuations.- Distances from the Correlation between Galaxy Luminosities and Rotation Rates.- Distance Scale from Supernovae.- The Contribution of Microlensing Surveys to the Distance Scale.- Stellar Evolution and Standard Candles.