The reliability of Cepheid reddenings based on BVIC photometry

The two scales agree well in scale and zero-point, and there is no significant trend with period. Given the non-zero errors in the Cepheid space reddenings, the estimated error in BVIC Cepheid reddenings is no more than 0.02. The above results are not significantly changed whether one corrects the reddenings for metallicity using older Bell models, or using more recent models by Sandage, Bell & Tripicco. Using the SBT models to correct the reddenings of Cloud Cepheids for metallicity gives slightly smaller reddenings at a given metal deficiency, yielding ‘new’ median reddenings of 0.056 (Small Magellanic Cloud) and 0.076 (Large Magellanic Cloud) if we assume the same metal deficiencies as Caldwell and Coulson. With metal deficiencies of [M/H]=−0.7 and −0.25, the median reddenings are 0.040 and 0.058.