VizieR Online Data Catalog: Messier 51 Cepheid catalogue (Csoernyei+, 2023)

Cepheid variable stars provide the most precise and reliable way to date to infer distances to galaxies outside the Local Group. Deriving the period-luminosity relation however requires extensive set of observations, hence the number of host galaxies with known Cepheid distance is still limited. Here, we present a catalogue of Cepheid variable stars in the nearby galaxy Messier 51 (NGC 5194). This catalogue was derived from the massive stellar variability census of Conroy et al. (2018ApJ...864..111C, Cat. J/ApJ/864/111), which collected data for Messier 51 using the Hubble Space Telescope throughout Cycle 24. We applied multiple automatic filterings on this dataset, which allowed us to select the Cepheid variables reliably: a filter based on the periodicity of the stars, their light curve shape, and then finally, a filter based on their position on the colour-magnitude diagram. These three filters then yielded us a set of 638 Cepheid variables, which were then used to infer the distance Messier 51. This data alone allowed for a 3% precise distance estimate, which is competitive current day's cutting edge uncertainties.

The main data presented in this paper is a subset of the catalogue published by Conroy et al. (2018ApJ...864..111C, Cat. J/ApJ/864/111). We present the data necessary to perform the Cepheid based distance estimation for Messier 51 using the stars selected by our filtering techniques, such as period, brightness (F555W, F606W and F814W), and Wesenheit magnitude values. We include metallicity measurements for each sample stars as well, which were derived based on the metallicity gradient estimated by Zaritsky et al. (1994ApJ...420...87Z).

(1 data file).