THE ACS FORNAX CLUSTER SURVEY. V. MEASUREMENT AND RECALIBRATION OF SURFACE BRIGHTNESS FLUCTUATIONS AND A PRECISE VALUE OF THE FORNAX–VIRGO RELATIVE DISTANCE

By J. Blakeslee, A. Jord'an, S. Mei, P. Côté, L. Ferrarese, L. Infante, E. Peng, J. Tonry, M. West. 2009

336 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present (g475 − z850) color and z850-band surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) measurements for 43 early-type galaxies in the Fornax cluster imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys. These are combined with our earlier measurements for Virgo cluster galaxies to derive a revised, nonlinear calibration of the z850-band SBF absolute magnitude as a function of (g475 − z850) color, valid for the AB color range 0.8 < (g475 − z850) < 1.6. In all, we tabulate recalibrated SBF distances for 134 galaxies in Virgo, Fornax, the Virgo W′ group, and NGC 4697 in the Virgo Southern Extension. The calibration procedure yields a highly precise relative distance modulus for Fornax with respect to Virgo of Δ(m − M)FV = 0.42 ± 0.03 mag, or a distance ratio dF/dV = 1.214 ± 0.017. The resulting Fornax distance modulus is (m − M)For = 31.51 ± 0.03 ± 0.15 mag, corresponding to dF = 20.0 ± 0.3 ± 1.4 Mpc, where the second set of error bars reflects the total systematic uncertainty from our assumed Virgo distance of 16.5 Mpc. The rms distance scatter for the early-type Fornax cluster galaxies is σd = 0.49+0.11−0.15 Mpc, or a total line-of-sight depth of 2.0+0.4−0.6 Mpc, consistent with its compact appearance on the sky. This translates to a depth scatter smaller than the intrinsic, or “cosmic,” scatter σcos in the SBF calibration, unlike the case for the larger Virgo cluster. As a result, we are able to place the first tight constraints on the value of σcos. We find σcos = 0.06 ± 0.01 mag, with a firm upper limit of σcos < 0.08 mag, for the subsample of galaxies with (g475 − z850)>1.02, but it is about twice as large for bluer galaxies. We also present an alternative SBF calibration based on the “fluctuation count” parameter , a proxy for galaxy mass. This gives a consistent relative distance but with larger intrinsic scatter, and we adopt the result from the calibration on (g475 − z850) because of its basis in stellar population properties alone. Finally, we find no evidence for systematic trends of the galaxy distances with position or velocity (e.g., no current infall); the Fornax cluster appears both compact and well virialized.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/676881c2f969e0bf855d680c607a5286fdfbbeec

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Cappellari
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. Luis C. Ho
5. J. Kormendy
6. T. Naab
7. M. Sarzi
8. Roger Davies

In Instrumentation

1. M. Cappellari
2. J. Kormendy
3. Luis C. Ho
4. P. Hopkins
5. T. Naab
6. L. Hernquist
7. M. Sarzi
8. M. Bureau

Citations in the corpus

• The Distance to NGC 5128 (Centaurus A) (2009, background): “…measurements in the I-band are dominated by the red giant branch stars, and while the absolute fluctuation magnitude is expected to vary with age and metallicity of a stellar population, its mean color can be used to constrain the distance measurements to,10% accuracy (Blakeslee et al. 2009).”
• Imaging the Schwarzschild-radius-scale Structure of M87 with the Event Horizon Telescope Using Sparse Modeling (2017, background): “…size of the Schwarzschild radius (Rs) is ∼ 10 µas for Sgr A* for a distance of 8.3 kpc and a mass of 4.3 × 106 M (e.g. Chatzopoulos et al. 2015), and ∼ 3 − 7 µas for M87 with a distance for 16.7 Mpc (Blakeslee et al. 2009) and a mass of 3 − 6 × 109 M (e.g. Gebhardt et al. 2011; Walsh et al. 2013).”
• REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, methodology): “Our present sample includes updated distances to 44 galaxies, mostly based on surface brightness fluctuation measurements (Tonry et al. 2001; Blakeslee et al. 2009, 2010).”
• WIDE-FIELD PRECISION KINEMATICS OF THE M87 GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEM (2011, neutral): “The distance we adopt for M87 is 16.5 Mpc, which is consistent with analyses of surface brightness fluctuations (Blakeslee et al. 2009), GC sizes (Madrid et al. 2009), and the tip of the red giant branch (Bird et al. 2010).”
• The Hubble Constant from Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances (2021, methodology): “As a result, the method has been applied widely to study the 3D structure of the nearest galaxy clusters (Mei et al. 2007; Blakeslee et al. 2009; Cantiello et al. 2018a), determine the physical size of the “shadow” (and thus the mass) of the supermassive black hole in M87 (Event Horizon Telescope…”
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies (2013, methodology): “They derived M• = (2.7±0.8)×109 M⊙ (all masses are corrected to the SBF distance of 16.68 Mpc: Blakeslee et al. 2009).”
• Silhouette of M87*: A new window to peek into the world of hidden dimensions (2019, neutral): “8) Mpc [65–67], while the masses, M ∼ 6.”
• COSMICFLOWS-2: THE DATA (2013, background): “Currently, the contributions from HST are either of a calibration nature or restricted to the nearest two large clusters, Virgo and Fornax (Mei et al. 2007; Blakeslee et al. 2009).”
• Galaxy Groups Within 3500 km s−1 (2017, methodology): “In a study of distances using the surface brightness fluctuation technique with the Hubble Space Telescope, five galaxies were found to be distinctly more distant than the rest of the sample (Mei et al. 2007; Blakeslee et al. 2009).”
• THE NEXT GENERATION VIRGO CLUSTER SURVEY (NGVS). I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SURVEY (2012, methodology): “High-precision SBF distances were measured as part of the ACSVCS for 92 galaxies classified as cluster members in the VCC (Mei et al. 2007; Blakeslee et al. 2009, 2010).”
• The ATLAS3D project – I. A volume-limited sample of 260 nearby early-type galaxies: science goals and selection criteria (2010, methodology): “…withMK < −21.5 mag we tried to automatically assign the most accurate available distance according to the following order of priority: (i) Distance obtained with the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method for the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey (Mei et al. 2007; Blakeslee et al. 2009) (91 values).”
• GALAXIES AT THE EXTREMES: ULTRA-DIFFUSE GALAXIES IN THE VIRGO CLUSTER (2015, background): “Finding such systems in the nearby Virgo Cluster would be of particular interest, since they would be close enough (dVirgo = 16.5 Mpc; Mei et al. 2007, Blakeslee et al. 2009) to resolve their stellar populations and study their structure in detail.”
• Families of dynamically hot stellar systems over 10 orders of magnitude in mass (2011, background): “References for the literature distance moduli (m−M)lit are: (a) Mieske et al. (2005a); (b) Mei et al. (2007); (c) Dirsch, Richtler & Bassino (2003); (d) Blakeslee et al. (2009).”