Enhancing Our Knowledge of Northern Cepheids through Photometric Monitoring

A selection of known and newly-discovered northern hemisphere Cepheids and related objects are being monitored regularly through CCD observations at the automated Abbey Ridge Observatory, near Halifax, and photoelectric photometry from the Saint Mary's University Burke-Gaffney Observatory. Included is Polaris, which is displaying unusual fluctuations in its growing light amplitude, and a short-period, double-mode Cepheid, HDE 344787, with an amplitude smaller than that of Polaris, along with a selection of other classical Cepheids in need of additional observations. The observations are being used to establish basic parameters for the Cepheids, for application to the Galactic calibration of the Cepheid period-luminosity relation as well as studies of Galactic structure.