Adjusting the distance scales of old and intermediate-age tracers via statistical parallaxes

The method of statistical-parallax determination is used to adjust the photometric distance-scale zero points and test the selection of several samples of old and intermediate-age tracer objects in the Milky Way, including RR Lyrae- and Mira-type variables, blue and red horizontal-branch stars, and red giants. We obtain reasonable and stable absolute-magnitude (and, hence, photometric distance-scale) corrections for all samples except for the red horizontal-branch stars, which appear to be significantly contaminated by main-sequence turn-off and subgiant stars.