Morphology of the Large Magellanic Cloud Using Classical Cepheids

Abstract

The Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation is one of the most important relation in Astrophysics and is an important rung in the extra-galactic distance scale ladder. Cepheids are pulsating stars with a regularly repeating light curve that display a correlation between their period of oscillation and their true intrinsic brightness This Cepheid Period-Luminosity (PL) relation is one of the most important relations in Astrophysics and a crucial rung on the extra-galactic distance scale ladder. Here we use publicly available V and I band data for Cepheids in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (two nearby irregular galaxies) to formulate PL relation for the Magellanic Clouds and use these relations to find individual distances to Cepheids in these galaxies. Combining these distances with RA and Dec we map the stars in a 3D coordinate system. We model the structure of the galaxies by fitting both a plane and a triaxial ellipsoid and find that the ellipsoid is more robust.