Mapping of Milky Way Cepheid Variables

造父变星是一种年轻的恒星，其物理上的脉动导致其亮度随时间的变化。在这些脉动的周期和这些恒星的亮度之间存在着内在的联系。因此，它们已成为重要的距离指标。它们的年轻意味着它们大部分应该在银河系盘中被发现。任何异常值都会对合并银河系的历史产生兴趣：矮卫星星系与我们的星系相互作用和碰撞。这样的事件可能会把年轻的造父变星抛到更高的纬度。目前的盖亚DR1数据和未来的DR2发布不包含造父变星的任何时域信息。因此，需要其他的选择标准来识别数据中的这些恒星。这就导致了来自其他恒星类型的污染问题。该项目的工作旨在制定最佳选择标准来绘制造父变星，然后设计理论模型来解释观测到的分布是如何形成的。这样的工作可以与之前的天琴座RR变量的映射相结合，以确定我们银河系的亚结构。

Cepheid Variables are young stars that physically pulsate causing a variation in their luminosity over time. An intrinsic relation exists between the period of these pulsations and the luminosity of these stars. They have therefore become vital distance indicators. Their young age implies they should mostly be found within the galactic disk. Any outliers would be of interest to merging history of the Milky Way: dwarf satellite galaxies interacting and colliding with our galaxy. Such events could throw the young Cepheids out of the disk to higher latitudes. The current Gaia DR1 data and the future DR2 release do no contain any time domain information of the cepheids contained within. Therefore, other selection criteria is needed to identify these stars in the data. This causes issues of contamination from other stellar types. Work in this project seeks to formulate optimal selection criteria to map the Cepheids and then devise theoretical models to explain how the observed distribution could have formed. Such work could be combined with the previous mappings of RR Lyrae variables to identify substructure within our Galaxy.