Pseudomagnitude distances: Application to the Pleiades cluster

A. Chelli , G. Duvert (1)

1 IPAG - Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble

The concept of pseudomagnitude has recently been introduced to estimate apparent stellar diameters using a strictly observational methodology. Pseudomagnitudes are distance indicators which have the remarkable property of being reddening free. In this study, we use Hipparcos parallax measurements to compute the mean absolute pseudomagnitudes of solar neighbourhood dwarf stars as a function of their spectral type. To illustrate the use of absolute pseudomagnitudes, we derive the distance moduli of 360 Pleiades stars and find that the centroid of their distribution is 5.715 ± 0.018, corresponding to a distance of 139.0 ± 1.2 pc. We locate the subset of ~50 Pleiades stars observed by Hipparcos at a mean distance of 135.5 ± 3.7 pc, thus confirming the frequently reported anomaly in the Hipparcos measurements of these stars.

Table 3 is only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (http://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/593/L18

Keywords: stars: distances; methods: data analysis; methods: observational; techniques: photometric; Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]

A. Chelli, G. Duvert. Pseudomagnitude distances: Application to the Pleiades cluster. Astronomy and Astrophysics - A&A, 2016, 593, ⟨10.1051/0004-6361/201629024⟩. ⟨insu-03691522⟩