Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances. II. Zero-Point Calibration

By L. Rizzi, R. B. Tully, Dmitry I. Makarov, L. Makarova, A. Dolphin, S. Sakai, Edward Shaya. 2007

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The luminosity of the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) provides an excellent measure of galaxy distances and is easily determined in the resolved images of nearby galaxies observed with Hubble Space Telescope. There is now a large amount of archival data that are relevant to the TRGB methodology and offer comparisons with other distance estimators. Zero-point issues related to the TRGB distance scale are reviewed in this paper. Consideration is given to the metallicity dependence of the TRGB, the transformations between HST flight systems and Johnson-Cousins photometry, the absolute magnitude scale based on horizontal branch measurements, and the effects of reddening. The zero point of the TRGB is established with a statistical accuracy of 1%, modulo the uncertainty in the magnitude of the horizontal branch, with a typical rms uncertainty of 3% in individual galaxy distances at high Galactic latitude. The zero point is consistent with the Cepheid period-luminosity relation scale but invites reconsideration of the claimed metallicity dependence with that method. The maser distance to NGC 4258 is consistent with TRGB but presently has lower accuracy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/17bdfe90c05c1394c4bd16f1400a3af1c026d631

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Citations in the corpus

HyperLEDA. III. The catalogue of extragalactic distances (2014, methodology): “For example,Rizzi et al.(2007) calibrated the zero-point of the TRGB method using HB stars: MJCI = −4.05(±0.02)+ 0.22(±0.01)[(V − I) − 1.6].”
Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (2003, background): “…empirically, this distinctive feature in the observed RGB luminosity function is well-known to be an excellent means of measuring the distances in the halos of nearby resolved galaxies: in the I band the TRGB is a “standard candle” (e.g., Lee et al. 1993; Rizzi et al. 2007; Serenelli et al. 2017).”
UPDATED NEARBY GALAXY CATALOG (2013, methodology): “As it was shown by Rizzi et al. (2007), the tip of the red giant branch method (TRGB) gives the distance accuracy of ∼5% regardless of the galaxy morphological type.”
THE EXTRAGALACTIC DISTANCE DATABASE (2009, methodology): “The remainder are luminosity–linewidth (LLW) measurements, either those from the Karachentsev et al. Flat Galaxy Catalog with 2MASS photometry (black open circles) or those from this program (blue triangles), compared with Cepheid PLR or TRGB on the reference axis.”
COSMICFLOWS-2: THE DATA (2013, methodology): “The zero point calibrations in alternative HST filter combinations were derived by Rizzi et al. (2007).”
The Distance to NGC 5128 (Centaurus A) (2009, methodology): “Combined with the most recent Rizzi et al. (2007) calibration and using AI¼ 0.22 0.02 (Schlegel et al. 1998), with reddening law from Cardelli et al. (1989), we therefore find (m M)0¼ 27.93 0.13 for the average of the three regions.”
THE EXTRAGALACTIC DISTANCE DATABASE: COLOR–MAGNITUDE DIAGRAMS (2009, methodology): “5 Rizzi et al. (2007) present a zero-point calibration that is adjusted for metallicity as well as for the details of HST observations.”
The Hubble Constant (2010, background): “A recent and excellent review of the topic is given by Rizzi et al. (2007) and Bellazzini (2008).”
THE GHOSTS SURVEY. I. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE ADVANCED CAMERA FOR SURVEYS DATA (2011, methodology): “By inverting this relation and converting it to the Carretta & Gratton (1997) scale, Rizzi et al. (2007) have calculated the metallicity of HST-observed stars in several nearby galaxies.”
CONFIRMATION OF FAINT DWARF GALAXIES IN THE M81 GROUP (2013, methodology): “Previous work has shown that it is possible to measure tip of the red giant branch distances for resolved stellar populations in dwarf galaxies out to ∼ 10 Mpc (see e.g. Makarov et al. 2006; Rizzi et al. 2007; Jacobs et al. 2009).”
Our Peculiar Motion Away from the Local Void (2007, methodology): “Using the procedures described by Rizzi et al. (2007) we find a distance of 6.4 Mpc.”
THE OBSERVED PROPERTIES OF DWARF GALAXIES IN AND AROUND THE LOCAL GROUP (2012, background): “Note that many TRGB estimates do not include the formal uncertainty in the absolute magnitude of the TRGB (Bellazzini et al. 2001, 2004a; Rizzi et al. 2007).”