On the Shoulders of Giants: Retracing Henrietta S. Leavitt's 25 Cepheid Variables in the SMC

[Tobias Cornelius Hinse]

I am in need of help and who knows, maybe this could result in a small publication...

I am trying to identify the 25 Cepheid variables (CV) as mentioned in Leavitt & Pickering  (1912):

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1912HarCi.173....1L/abstract
(PDF available to the right)

The first CV mentioned in Table 1 is 1505. Searching SIMBAD for object "HV1505" produces:

https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-basic?Ident=HV1505&submit=SIMBAD+search

and this object is easily associated with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC).

In general, (credit goes to Peter K. G. Williams @ Harvard) looking up a Harvard variable follows the syntax:

SV* HV {number}

However, for the next object, SV* HV 1436, there is no result from SIMBAD. There is at least one "missing star"
that cannot be looked up straightforwardly.

The question and problem is now: where is 1436 located on the sky? What is its modern naming?

The first step is to find the corresponding plate that Leavitt looked at. The relevant original paper is

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1908AnHar..60...87L/abstract
(this is Leavitt's seminal paper where she for the first time found clues on the brightness-period relationship: establishing the 2nd rung on the distance ladder).

1436 is one of the 969 variable stars as mentioned on page 88 and its location on the mentioned plate is given on page 90.

The plate (credit to Williams) is to be found here:

SMC: https://starglass.cfa.harvard.edu/plate/a03393
LMC: https://starglass.cfa.harvard.edu/plate/a07123

In the following our focus is on SMC.

An astrometrically calibrated (fz compressed) FITS file (c) can be downloaded by clicking "Mosaics".

I am hoping that Astrometrica can help in answering the above question. Upon loading the FITS image into Astrometrica, I encounter and
error where a small window with date and time is not reacting when clicking the OK button.

Can anyone help with this step and outline possible next steps?

Best wishes,

Tobias

[Εμμανουήλ Φωκίτης]

We thank you Tobias for sharing this important information. I wish I could help. 

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[Dustin Lang]

Hi,

This sounds like an interesting project.

But, it sounds like you are having a specific technical issue with the Astrometrica software.  Maybe someone on this forum has experience with that, but you really should contact the authors of Astrometrica.  (This forum is about a related piece of software, Astrometry.net).

If you make a bug report to the Astrometrica folks, you will need to be *much* more detailed in describing what you are doing and what is happening.  Include screen shots if possible.

cheers,

dustin

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[Tobias Cornelius Hinse]

Dear Dustin,

thank you. I have also posted the same question to the astrometrica
group and some are currently in the process of figuring something out.
Cross fingers!

Thanks for your reply!

Best, Toby