Absolute Calibration of Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relations in NGC 4258

TL;DR

This study calibrates Cepheid period-luminosity relations in NGC 4258 using HST data, confirming consistency with LMC calibrations and refining the zero-point for improved distance measurements.

Contribution

It provides a new, extensive Cepheid sample in NGC 4258 and offers an absolute calibration of their optical PLRs, enhancing the precision of cosmic distance scale measurements.

Findings

Cepheid PLR zero-point consistent with LMC calibration within uncertainties.

Determined a Wesenheit PLR slope of -3.294 with small error.

Metallicity dependence of the PLR zero-point is constrained to -0.07 ± 0.21 mag/dex.

Abstract

NGC 4258 is one of the most important anchors for calibrating the Cepheid period--luminosity relations (PLRs) owing to its accurate distance measured from water maser motions. We expand on previous efforts and carry out a new Cepheid search in this system using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We discover and measure a sample of 669 Cepheids in four new and two archival NGC 4258 fields, doubling the number of known Cepheids in this galaxy and obtaining an absolute calibration of their optical PLRs. We determine a Wesenheit PLR of $-2.574(\pm0.034) -3.294(\pm0.042) \log P$, consistent with an independent Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) calibration at the level of $0.032\pm0.044$~mag in its zeropoint, after accounting for a metallicity dependence of $-0.20\pm0.05$~mag\,dex$^{-1}$ (Riess et al. 2006). Our determination of the PLR slope also agrees with the LMC-based value within their uncertainties. We attempt to characterize the metallicity effect of Cepheid PLRs using only the NGC 4258 sample, but a relatively narrow span of abundances limits our sensitivity and yields a Wesenheit zero-point dependence of $-0.07 \pm 0.21$ mag\,dex$^{-1}$. The Cepheid measurements presented in this study have been used as part of the data to derive the Hubble constant in a companion paper by the SH0ES team.