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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 September 2002
Stellar candles are the basic tools to determine the extragalacticdistance scale. Its use relies on some given fundamentalrelation that allows to estimate the absolute magnitude of an objectfrom observable parameters and from that its distance. The Hipparcosmission greatly contributed to the refinement of these fundamentalrelations, but even with its milliarcsecond-precision data, theuncertainties in the calibration of Stellar Candles are still high. Toimprove these results larger samples and higher astrometric precisionare needed. GAIA, with its microarcsecond, one-billion objectscatalogue, will provide all the necessary data for this task.