Cepheids have been the cornerstone of the extragalactic distance scale for a century. With high-quality data, these luminous supergiants exhibit a small dispersion in their Leavitt (period–luminosity) relation, particularly at longer wavelengths, and few methods rival the precision possible with Cepheid distances. In these proceedings, we present an overview of major observational programs pertaining to the Cepheid extragalactic distance scale, its progress and remaining challenges. In addition, we present preliminary new results on Cepheids from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The launch of JWST has opened a new chapter in the measurement of extragalactic distances and the Hubble constant. JWST offers a resolution three times that of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with nearly 10 times the sensitivity. It has been suggested that the discrepancy in the value of the Hubble constant based on Cepheids compared to that inferred from measurements of the cosmic microwave background requires new and additional physics beyond the standard cosmological model. JWST observations will be critical in reducing remaining systematics in the Cepheid measurements and for confirming if new physics is indeed required. Early JWST data for the galaxy, NGC 7250 show a decrease in scatter in the Cepheid Leavitt law by a factor of two relative to existing HST data and demonstrate that crowding/blending effects are a significant issue in a galaxy as close as 20 Mpc.

The Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument, comprised of two detectors, UVIS (Ultraviolet-Visible) and IR (Infrared), has been acquiring ~ 50-100 images daily since its installation in 2009. The WFC3 Quicklook project provides a means for instrument analysts to store, calibrate, monitor, and interact with these data through the various Quicklook systems: (1) a ~ 175 TB filesystem, which stores the entire WFC3 archive on disk, (2) a MySQL database, which stores image header data, (3) a Python-based automation platform, which currently executes 22 unique calibration/monitoring scripts, (4) a Python-based code library, which provides system functionality such as logging, downloading tools, database connection objects, and filesystem management, and (5) a Python/Flask-based web interface to the Quicklook system. The Quicklook project has enabled large-scale WFC3 analyses and calibrations, such as the monitoring of the health and stability of the WFC3 instrument, the measurement of ~ 20 million WFC3/UVIS Point Spread Functions (PSFs), the creation of WFC3/IR persistence calibration products, and many others.

Excess thermal energy within a Charged Coupled Device (CCD) results in excess electrical current that is trapped within the lattice structure of the electronics. This excess signal from the CCD itself can be present through multiple exposures, which will have an adverse effect on its science performance unless it is corrected for. The traditional way to correct for this extra charge is to take occasional long-exposure images with the camera shutter closed. These images, generally referred to as “dark” images, allow for the measurement of thermal-electron contamination at each pixel of the CCD. This so-called “dark current” can then be subtracted from the science images by re-scaling to the science exposure times. Pixels that have signal above a certain value are traditionally marked as “hot” and flagged in the data quality array. Many users will discard these pixels as being bad. However, these pixels may not be bad in the sense that they cannot be reliably dark-subtracted; if these pixels are shown to be stable over a given anneal period, the charge can be properly subtracted and the extra Poisson noise from this dark current can be taken into account and put into the error arrays.

From the dawn of consciousness, humans have looked up and wondered about what the universe holds. It is that sense of wonder and thirst for knowledge that astronomy has helped fuel. In this paper we look at how education and public outreach has been a major element in preparing the next generation of astronomers and in sharing with the public the excitement of discoveries we make when we explore the Universe. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a clear set of goals and objectives related to education and public outreach. These goals follow directly from NASA's mission “to inspire the next generation of explorers”. Making progress towards achieving these goals has become an important part of the broad justification for public support of space science. Here we will describe a number of education and public outreach initiatives that are examples of the plethora of NASA funded programs and resources.

Polaris, the nearest and brightest classical Cepheid, is a member of at least a triple system. It has a wide (18″) physical companion, the F-type dwarf Polaris B. Polaris itself is a single-lined spectroscopic binary with an orbital period of ∼30 years (Kamper 1996). By combining Hipparcos measurements of the instantaneous proper motion with long-term measurements and the Kamper radial-velocity orbit, Wielen et al (2000) have predicted the astrometric orbit of the close companion. Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Advanced Camera for Surveys' High-Resolution Channel with an ultraviolet (F220W) filter, we have now directly detected the close companion. Based on the Wielen et al orbit, the Hipparcos parallax, and our measurement of the separation (0″.176 ± 0″.002), we find a preliminary mass of 5.0 ± 1.5 M⊙ for the Cepheid and 1.38 ± 0.61 M⊙ for the close companion. These values will be refined by additional HST observations scheduled for the next 3 years.

We have also obtained a Chandra ACIS-I image of the Polaris field. Two distant companions C and D are not X-rays sources and hence are not young enough to be physical companions of the Cepheid. There is one additional stellar X-ray source in the field, located 253″ from Polaris A, which is a possible companion. Further investigation of such a distant companion is valuable to confirm the full extent of the system.

We report preliminary results from our search for massive giant planets (6–12 Jupiter masses) around the known seven single white dwarfs in the Hyades cluster at sub-arcsec separations. At an age of 625 Myr, the white dwarfs had progenitor masses of about 3 solar masses, and massive gaseous giant planets should have formed in the massive circumstellar disks around these ex-Herbig A0 stars, probably at orbital separations similar or slightly larger than that of Jupiter. Such planets would have survived the post-Main-Sequence mass loss of the parent star and would have migrated outward adiabatically to orbital separations of about 25 AU. At the distance of the Hyades (45 pc) this corresponds to angular separations of about 0.5 arcsec which can be resolved with NICMOS/HST; the expected contrast in the J and H bands amount to 7.5 $\pm$ 1.5 mag.

Evaluation of our NICMOS data set did not reveal any evidence for planetary mass companions with masses down to about 10 Jupiter masses nor brown dwarfs around any of the seven white dwarfs for separations larger than 0.5 arcsec. However, we detected a low-mass, probably stellar, companion to a field white dwarf (WD1847-223J, distance $\sim$50 pc, age $\sim$1 Gyr; separation $\sim$0.5 arcsec, $\Delta$H $\sim$ 2.5 mag), using the NACO adaptive optics system at the VLT.