A fresh look at manufactured housing

Manufactured housing park cooperatives are becoming popular in New Hampshire, and for good reason. Cooperative ownership brings numerous benefits to residents who previously owned a home on rented land. Paul Bradley tells how these cooperatives have grown and explains what is yet to be done.Housing - New Hampshire

Changes in Mean Global Physical Parameters of Blazhko RR Lyrae stars -- Derived from Multicolor Photometry

We developed an Inverse Photometric method (IPM) to determine global physical parameters of RR Lyrae stars exclusively from multicolor light curves (S\'odor, Jurcsik & Szeidl, 2009, MNRAS, 394, 261). We showed that for good quality photometric observations of unmodulated RRab stars, the IPM gives similarly good results as direct Baade-Wesselink analyses do, but without the need for spectroscopic measurements. In the course of the development, we payed special attention to the applicability of the IPM for modulated RR Lyrae stars. Since there is no simultaneous spectroscopic radial velocity and photometric observations of any Blazhko star with good phase coverage both in pulsation and modulation, which would allow spectroscopic Baade-Wesselink analysis, the IPM is the only possibility today to study changes in the global physical parameters of Blazhko RR Lyrae stars during the modulation cycle. With the IPM, we have studied the extensive multicolor light curves of 4 Blazhko RRab stars we observed with the 24-inch telescope of the Konkoly Observatory during the past 5 years in the frame of the Konkoly Blazhko Survey. Small but unambiguous changes in the pulsation-averaged mean temperature, mean radius and mean luminosity have been detected in each star. Results on these Blazhko stars (SS Cnc, DM Cyg, RR Gem, and MW Lyr) are shown in this paper.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Appeared in STELLAR PULSATION: CHALLENGES FOR THEORY AND OBSERVATION: Proceedings of the International Conference. AIP Conference Proceedings, Volume 1170, pp. 294-298 (2009

New Results of the Konkoly Blazhko Group

During the recent years the Konkoly Blazhko Group (PIs Johanna Jurcsik and B\'ela Szeidl, co-workers \'Ad\'am S\'odor, Zsombor Hurta and several undergraduate, graduate students) published new important results of Blazhko variables in 15 reviewed Journal articles. These results utilize multicolor CCD observations obtained with an automatic 60 cm telescope, and also previously unpublished Konkoly archive photometric data. Our light curves are the most extended multicolor data-sets ever obtained for a Blazhko variable, the observations cover each phase of the pulsation and the modulation as well. We have detected many previously unknown features of the light curve modulation, and based on the different band's observations we also revealed the underlying variations of the mean physical parameters during the Blazhko cycle. In my contribution the main achievements of the Konkoly Blazhko Group are summarised.Comment: in "Stellar Pulsation: Challenges for Theory and Observation", Eds. J. Guzik and P. Bradley. (5 pages, 5 figures

The Cepheid Distance Scale: recent progress in fundamental techniques

This review examines progress on the Pop I, fundamental-mode Cepheid distance scale with emphasis on recent developments in geometric and quasi-geometric techniques for Cepheid distance determination. Specifically I examine the surface brightness method, interferometric pulsation method, and trigonometric measurements. The three techniques are found to be in excellent agreement for distance measures in the Galaxy. The velocity p-factor is of crucial importance in the first two of these methods. A comparison of recent determinations of the p-factor for Cepheids demonstrates that observational measures of p and theoretical predictions agree within their uncertainties for Galactic Cepheids.Comment: An invited review at the Santa Fe, NM, conference -- Stellar Pulsation: Challenges for Theory and Observation; May 31-June 5, 2009 10 pages, 8 figure

Fundamental Parameters of Cepheids: Masses and Multiplicity

Masses determined from classical Cepheids in binary systems are a primary test of both pulsation and evolutionary calculations. The first step is to determine the orbit from ground-based radial velocities. Complementary satellite data from Hubble, FUSE, IUE, and Chandra provide full information about the system. A summary of recent results on masses is given. Cepheids have also provided copious information about the multiplicity of massive stars, as well as the distribution of mass ratios and separations. This provides some important constraints for star formation scenarios including differences between high and low mass results and differences between close and wide binaries