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Toward a VLBI resolution of the Pleiades distance controversy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2013

Carl Melis ,
M. J. Reid ,
A. J. Mioduszewski ,
J. R. Stauffer  and
G. C. Bower
Carl Melis
Affiliation:
Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, University of California, San Diego, CA 92093–0424, USA email: cmelis@ucsd.edu
M. J. Reid
Affiliation:
Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
A. J. Mioduszewski
Affiliation:
National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Array Operations Center, 1003 Lopezville Road, Socorro, NM 87801, USA
J. R. Stauffer
Affiliation:
Spitzer Science Center (SSC), 1200 E. California Blvd., California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
G. C. Bower
Affiliation:
Astronomy Department and Radio Astronomy Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
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Abstract

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The Pleiades is the best-studied open cluster in the sky. It is one of the primary open clusters used to define the ‘zero-age main sequence,' and hence it serves as a cornerstone for programs which use main-sequence fitting to derive distances. This role is called into question by the ‘Pleiades distance controversy:' the distance to the Pleiades from Hipparcos of approximately 120 pc is significantly different from the distance of 133 pc derived using other techniques. To resolve this issue, we plan to use Very Long Baseline Interferometry to derive a new, independent trigonometric parallax distance to the Pleiades. In these proceedings we present our observational program and report some preliminary results.

Keywords

techniques: interferometricastrometrystars: distancesopen clusters and associations: individual (Pleiades)distance scale
Type
Contributed Papers
Information
Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union , Volume 8 , Symposium S289: Advancing the Physics of Cosmic Distances , August 2012 , pp. 60 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2013

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