BVI photometry of NGC 4258 Cepheids

This galaxy was selected because of its accurate maser-based distance, which is anticipated to have a total uncertainty of 3%. The goal of the HST observations is to provide an absolute calibration of the Cepheid distance scale and to measure its dependence on chemical abundance (the so-called metallicity effect).

We carried out observations of two fields at different galactocentric distances with a mean abundance difference of 0.5dex. We discovered a total of 281 Cepheids with periods ranging from 4 to 45 days (the duration of our observing window).