• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.189-191
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• 2015

The calibration of the period luminosity relation (PLR) for Galactic Mira variables is one of the principle aims of the VERA project. We observe $H_2O$ maser emission at 22 GHz associated with Mira variables in order to determine their distances based on annual parallaxes. We conduct multi-epoch VLBI observations over 1-2 years with a typical interval of one month using VERA in order to obtain annual parallaxes with an accuracy of better than than 10%. Recently, the annnual parallax of T Lep was determined to be $3.06{\pm}0.04$ mas corresponding to a distance of $327{\pm}4pc$ (Nakagawa et al., 2014). The circumstellar distribution and kinematics of $H_2O$ masers was also revealed. With accurate distances to the sources, calibrations of K-band absolute magnitudes ($M_K$) can be improved compared to conventional studies. By compiling Mira variables whose distances were determined with astrometric VLBI, we obtained a PLR of $M_K=3.51logP+1.37{\pm}0.07$.