The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. IX. Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Method in the Mega-Maser Host Galaxy, NGC4258 (M106)

Abstract

In the nearby galaxy NGC 4258, the well-modeled orbital motion of H${}_2$O masers about its supermassive black hole provides the means to measure a precise geometric distance. As a result, NGC 4258 is one of a few "geometric anchors" available to calibrate the true luminosities of stellar distance indicators such as the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) or the Cepheid Leavitt law. In this paper, we present a detailed study of the apparent magnitude of the TRGB within NGC 4258 using publicly-available HST observations optimally situated in the gas- and dust-free halo along the minor axis, spanning distances ranging from 8 to 22 kpc in projected galactocentric radius. We undertake a systematic evaluation of the uncertainties associated with measuring the TRGB in this galaxy, based on an analysis of 54 arcmin${}^2$ of HST/ACS imaging. After quantifying these uncertainties, we measure the TRGB in NGC 4258 to be F814W${}_0$ = 25.347 $\pm$ 0.014(stat) $\pm$ 0.042(sys) mag. Combined with a recent 1.5% megamaser distance to NGC 4258, we determine the absolute luminosity of the TRGB to be $M_{F814W}^{TRGB}$ = -4.050 $\pm$ 0.028(stat) $\pm$ 0.048(sys) mag. This new calibration agrees to better than 1% with an independent calibration presented in Freedman et al. (2019, 2020) that was based on detached eclipsing binaries (DEBs) located in the LMC.

31 pages, 19 figures, 4 tables, and 3 appendices, accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (17)

• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• HyperLEDA. III. The catalogue of extragalactic distances
• A distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud that is precise to one per cent
• The ACS Nearby Galaxy Survey Treasury
• Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB)
• The Megamaser Cosmology Project. XIII. Combined Hubble constant constraints
• A new Cepheid distance to the maser-host galaxy NGC 4258 and its implications for the Hubble Constant
• Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances. I. Optimization of a Maximum Likelihood Algorithm
• New Optical Reddening Maps of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds
• The Dragonfly Nearby Galaxies Survey. I. Substantial variation in the diffuse stellar halos around spiral galaxies
• Diverse Stellar Haloes in Nearby Milky Way-Mass Disc Galaxies
• The Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies. IV. Color Dependence and Zero-Point Calibration
• Sharpening the Tip of the Red Giant Branch
• Comparison of Distances from RR Lyrae Stars, the Tip of the Red-Giant Branch and Classical Cepheids
• Metallicity-corrected Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance to NGC 4258
• Empirical calibration of the reddening maps in the Magellanic Clouds
• A Survey of Satellite Galaxies around NGC 4258

Cited by in corpus (28)

• A Comprehensive Measurement of the Local Value of the Hubble Constant with 1 km/s/Mpc Uncertainty from the Hubble Space Telescope and the SH0ES Team
• Measurements of the Hubble Constant: Tensions in Perspective
• A buyer's guide to the Hubble Constant
• The Parallax of Omega Centauri Measured from Gaia EDR3 and a Direct, Geometric Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch and the Hubble Constant
• Comparing Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance Scales: An Independent Reduction of the Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program and the Value of the Hubble Constant
• The Extragalactic Distance Database: The Color-Magnitude Diagrams and Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances Catalog
• Symmetry of Cosmological Observables, and a High Hubble Constant as an Indicator of a Mirror World Dark Sector
• A sub-2% Distance to M31 from Photometrically Homogeneous Near-Infrared Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relations Measured with the Hubble Space Telescope
• The Local Distance Network: a community consensus report on the measurement of the Hubble constant at 1% precision
• The Carnegie Chicago Hubble Program X: Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to NGC 5643 and NGC 1404
• The Astrophysical Distance Scale III: Distance to the Local Group Galaxy WLM using Multi-Wavelength Observations of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch, Cepheids, and JAGB Stars
• On Zero Point Calibration of the Red Giant Branch Tip in the Magellanic Clouds
• A Maximum Likelihood Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Luminosity from High Latitude Field Giants using Gaia Early Data Release 3 Parallaxes
• Comparative Analysis of TRGBs (CATs) from Unsupervised, Multi-Halo-Field Measurements: Contrast is Key
• Relativistic corrections for measuring Hubble's constant to 1% using stellar standard candles
• Calibration of Surface Brightness Fluctuations for Dwarf Galaxies in the Hyper Suprime-Cam $gi$ Filter System
• A Preliminary Calibration of the JAGB Method Using Gaia EDR3
• Reeling in the Whirlpool: the distance to M 51 clarified by Cepheids and the Type IIP SN 2005cs
• Hubble distancing: Focusing on distance measurements in cosmology
• Distances to Local Group Galaxies via Population II, Stellar Distance Indicators. II. The Fornax Dwarf Spheroidal
• Coordinated JWST Imaging of Three Distance Indicators in a SN Host Galaxy and an Estimate of the TRGB Color Dependence
• Standardized Luminosity of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch utilizing Multiple Fields in NGC 4258 and the CATs Algorithm
• Discord in Concordance Cosmology and Anomalously Massive Early Galaxies
• A Geometric Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch in the Milky Way using Gaia DR3
• Tests of photometry: the case of the NGC 3370 ACS field
• The Chicago Carnegie Hubble Program: Improving the Calibration of SNe Ia with JWST Measurements of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch
• Andromeda XXXV: The Faintest Dwarf Satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy
• The Astrophysical Distance Scale: V. A 2% Distance to the Local Group Spiral M33 via the JAGB Method, Tip of the Red Giant Branch, and Leavitt Law