OPTICAL IDENTIFICATION OF CEPHEIDS IN 19 HOST GALAXIES OF TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE AND NGC 4258 WITH THE HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE* * Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

We present results of an optical search conducted as part of the SH0ES project (Supernovae and H0 for the Equation of State of dark energy) for Cepheid variable stars using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) in 19 hosts of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) and the maser-host galaxy NGC 4258. The targets include nine newly imaged SN Ia hosts using a novel strategy based on a long-pass filter that minimizes the number of HST orbits required to detect and …