Description
We accurately determine a new Cepheid distance to M101 (NGC 5457) using archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/Advanced Camera for Surveys V and I time series photometry of two fields within the galaxy. We make a slight modification to the ISIS image subtraction package to obtain optimal differential light curves from HST data. We discovered 827 Cepheids with periods between 3 and 80 days, the largest extragalactic sample of Cepheids observed with HST by a factor of two. With this large Cepheid sample, we find that the relative distance of M101 from the Large Magellanic Cloud is {Delta}{mu}_LMC_=10.63+/-0.04 (random) +/-0.06 (systematic) mag. If we use the geometrically determined maser distance to NGC 4258 as our distance anchor, the distance modulus of M101 is {mu}_0_=29.04+/-0.05 (random) +/-0.18 (systematic) mag or D=6.4+/-0.2 (random) +/-0.5 (systematic) Mpc. The uncertainty is dominated by the maser distance estimate (+/-0.15mag), which should improve over the next few years.
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