The ACS LCID Project: Variable Stars in Tucana and LGS3

We present preliminary results concerning the search for short-period variable stars in Tucana and LGS3 based on very deep HST/ACS imaging. In the one chip per galaxy we studied so far, a total of 230 and 80 candidates variables were found, respectively. For Tucana, we identified 134 of them as RR Lyrae stars (RRL) pulsating in the fundamental mode (RRab), 51 in the first-overtone mode (RRc), and 37 in both modes simultaneoulsy (RRd), as well as four candidate anomalous Cepheids (AC). In the case of LGS3, we found 45 RRab and 5 RRc, plus three candidates RRd and five candidate AC. The metallicities obtained from the mean period of the RRab are [Fe/H]_{Tuc}=-1.7 and [Fe/H]_{LGS3}=-1.8.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the Proceedings of IAU Symposium 241: "Stellar Populations as Building Blocks of Galaxies", 10-16 December, 2006 at La Palma, Canary Islands, Spai

Galactic Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch

Indications from Gaia data release 2 (DR2) are that the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB, a population II standard candle related to the helium flash in low mass stars) is close to -4 in absolute I magnitude in the Cousins photometric system. Our sample is high latitude southern stars from the thick disk and inner halo, and our result is consistent with longstanding findings from globular clusters, whose distances were calibrated with RR Lyrae stars. As the Gaia mission proceeds, there is every reason to think an accurate Galactic geometric calibration of TRGB will be a significant outcome.Comment: to appear in PAS

Variable stars in the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822: the photometric catalogue

Deep B,V time-series photometry obtained with the ESO Very Large Telescope has been used to identify variable stars in the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822. We surveyed a 6.8x6.8 arcmin area of the galaxy and detected a total number of 390 candidate variables with the optimal image subtraction technique (Alard 2000). Light curves on a magnitude scale were obtained for 262 of these variables. Differential flux light curves are available for the remaining sample. In this paper we present the photometric catalogue of calibrated light curves and time-series data, along with coordinates and classification of the candidate variables. A detailed description is provided of the procedures used to identify the variable stars and calibrate their differential flux light curves on a magnitude scale.Comment: 22 pages, 19 figures only as JPEG. Revised version with corrected eq. 5. Full text with better resolution .ps figures available upon request from the authors. Uses aa.cls (included), in press on A&A. Table 2 will only be published at the CDS, Appendix A, Tables 4,5,6 will only be available in the electronic edition of the Journa