The calibration of the period luminosity relation (PLR) for Galactic Mira variables is one of the principle aims of the VERA project. We observe H2O 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 3.060.04 mas corresponding to a distance of 3274 pc (Nakagawa et al., 2014). The circumstellar distribution and kinematics of H2O masers was also revealed. With accurate distances to the sources, calibrations of K-band absolute magnitudes (MK) can be improved compared to conventional studies. By compiling Mira variables whose distances were determined with astrometric VLBI, we obtained a PLR of MK = 3.51 logP + 1.37 ± 0.07.

We report our measurements of the trigonometric distance and proper motion of IRAS 20056+3350, obtained from the annual parallax of H2O masers. Our distance of D = 4:69+0:65 -0:51 kpc, which is 2.8 times larger than the near kinematic distance adopted in the literature, places IRAS 20056+3350 at the leading tip of the Local arm and proximal to the Solar circle. We estimated the proper motion of IRAS 20056+3350 to be (μα cos δ, μδ) = (—2:62 ± 0:33, —5:65 ± 0:52) mas yr-1 from the group motion of H2O masers, and use our results to estimate the angular velocity of Galactic rotation at the Galactocentric distance of the Sun, Ω0 = 29:75 ± 2:29 km s-1 kpc-1, which is consistent with the values obtained for other tangent points and Solar circle objects.