A new calibration for the Blue Horizontal Branch

Abstract

We suggest a simple analytic approximation for magnitudes and hence distances of Blue Horizontal Branch (BHB) stars in Sloan colours. Precedent formulations do not offer a simple closed formula, nor do they cover the full dependences, e.g. on metallicity. Further, using BHB star samples from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) we validate our distance calibration directly on field stars instead of globular clusters and assess the performance of other available distance calibrations. Our method to statistically measure distances is sufficiently accurate to measure the colour and metallicity dependence on our sample and can be applied to other sets of stars or filters.

accepted for publication in MNRAS 9 pages, 9 figures

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• Stellar streams around the Magellanic Clouds
• The slight spin of the old stellar halo
• Characterising stellar halo populations I: An extended distribution function for halo K giants
• Stacking the Invisibles: A Guided Search for Low-Luminosity Milky Way Satellites
• Characterizing stellar halo populations II: The age gradient in blue horizontal-branch stars
• Does SEGUE/SDSS indicate a dual Galactic halo?
• The Frequency of Field Blue-Straggler Stars in the Thick Disk and Halo System of the Galaxy
• Rotational signature of the Milky Way stellar halo
• Galactic googly: the rotation-metallicity bias in the inner stellar halo of the Milky Way
• The Far-Away Blues: Exploring the Furthest Extents of the Boötes I Ultra Faint Dwarf Galaxy
• Exploring the interaction between the MW and LMC with a large sample of blue horizontal branch stars from the DESI survey
• An extended view of the Pisces Overdensity from the SCUSS survey
• The SDSS-Gaia View of the Color-Magnitude Relation for Blue Horizontal-branch Stars
• Exploring the total Galactic extinction with SDSS BHB stars
• Calibrating the BHB Star Distance Scale and the Halo Kinematic Distance to the Galactic Centre
• Galactic cartography with SkyMapper: I. Population sub-structure and the stellar number density of the inner halo
• Constraining the shape of Milky Way satellites with distance gradients