CORAVEL Radial Velocity Research Articles

Coravel Radial-Velocity Curves for Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Radii and luminosities for Cepheid variables provide fundamental information on stellar evolution. Such data, obtained by the Baade-Wesselink method, are available and have been used for a number of galactic Cepheids. It is of particular interest to obtain corresponding data for Cepheids in the Magellanic Clouds. Firstly, this allows a comparative study of stellar evolution between the Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds. Secondly, it provides data for an independent determination of the distance to the Magellanic Clouds.Radial-velocity observations have been made for a total of around 20 Cepheid variables in both the LMC and the SMC. All measurements were made with the photoelectric scanner CORAVEL attached to the Cassegrain focus of the Danish 1.54-m telescope at European Southern Observatory, La Silla, Chile. Observations were made from January 1981 through October 1983. The accuracy of individual radial-velocity observations is of the order of 1 km s−1. The B magnitudes of the six Cepheids presented range from 13.0 to 15.5.