The Fornax3D project: Planetary nebulae catalogue and independent distance measurements to Fornax cluster galaxies

Abstract

Extragalactic planetary nebulae (PNe) offer a way to determine the distance to their host galaxies thanks to the nearly universal shape of the planetary nebulae luminosity function (PNLF). Accurate PNe distance measurements rely on obtaining well-sampled PNLFs and the number of observed PNe scales with the encompassed stellar mass. This means either disposing of wide-field observations or focusing on the bright central regions of galaxies. In this work we take this second approach and conduct a census of the PNe population in the central regions of galaxies in the Fornax cluster, using VLT/MUSE data for the early-type galaxies observed over the course of the Fornax3D survey. Using such integral-field spectroscopic observations to carefully separate the nebular emission from the stellar continuum, we isolated [OIII] 5007 Å sources of interest, filtered out unresolved impostor sources or kinematic outliers, and present a catalogue of 1350 unique PNe sources across 21 early-type galaxies, which includes their positions, [OIII] 5007 Å line magnitudes, and line-of-sight velocities. Using the PNe catalogued within each galaxy, we present independently derived distance estimates based on the fit to the entire observed PNLF observed while carefully accounting for the PNe detection incompleteness. With these individual measurements, we arrive at an average distance to the Fornax cluster itself of 19.86 $\pm$ 0.32 Mpc (${\mu }_{PNLF}$ = 31.49 $\pm$ 0.04 mag). Our PNLF distance measurements agree well with previous distances based on surface brightness fluctuations, finding no significant systematic offsets between the two methods as otherwise reported in previous studies.

arXiv comment26 pages, 16 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics Journal. Corrected Fig. 7 legend

References in corpus (47)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• The NumPy array: a structure for efficient numerical computation
• Parametric Recovery of Line-of-Sight Velocity Distributions from Absorption-Line Spectra of Galaxies via Penalized Likelihood
• Improving the full spectrum fitting method: accurate convolution with Gauss-Hermite functions
• The SBF Survey of Galaxy Distances. IV. SBF Magnitudes, Colors, and Distances
• SparsePak: A Formatted Fiber Field Unit for The WIYN Telescope Bench Spectrograph. I. Design, Construction, and Calibration
• The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. XIII. SBF Distance Catalog and the Three-Dimensional Structure of the Virgo Cluster
• Automated data reduction workflows for astronomy
• Cosmicflows-2: The Data
• UV-extended E-MILES stellar population models: young components in massive early-type galaxies
• The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. V. Measurement and Recalibration of Surface Brightness Fluctuations and a Precise Value of the Fornax--Virgo Relative Distance
• Cosmicflows-3
• MIUSCAT: extended MILES spectral coverage. I. Stellar populations synthesis models
• Kinematic properties of early-type galaxy haloes using planetary nebulae
• A deep kinematic survey of planetary nebulae in the Andromeda Galaxy using the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph
• Planetary nebulae as tracers of galaxy stellar populations
• Planetary Nebulae in Face-On Spiral Galaxies. I. Planetary Nebula Photometry and Distances
• The PN.S Elliptical Galaxy Survey: Data Reduction, Planetary Nebula Catalog, and Basic Dynamics for NGC 3379
• Surface Brightness Fluctuations in the Hubble Space Telescope ACS/WFC F814W Bandpass and an Update on Galaxy Distances
• The Fornax 3D project: unveiling the thick disk origin in FCC 170: signs of accretion?
• The GIST Pipeline: A Multi-Purpose Tool for the Analysis and Visualisation of (Integral-field) Spectroscopic Data
• Detection of Intracluster Planetary Nebulae in the Coma Cluster
• The Fornax3D project: overall goals, galaxy sample, MUSE data analysis and initial results
• The planetary nebula population in the halo of M87
• The Fornax Deep Survey with VST. V. Exploring the faintest regions of the bright early-type galaxies inside the virial radius
• The Need for Speed: Escape velocity and dynamical mass measurements of the Andromeda galaxy
• The extended Planetary Nebula Spectrograph (ePN.S) early-type galaxy survey. The kinematic diversity of stellar halos and the relation between halo transition scale and stellar mass
• The Fornax3D project: Tracing the assembly history of the cluster from the kinematic and line-strength maps
• Distances from Surface Brightness Fluctuations
• The Fornax 3D project: a two-dimensional view of the stellar initial mass function in the massive lenticular galaxy FCC 167
• A revised planetary nebula luminosity function distance to NGC 628 using MUSE
• The Fornax 3D project: Thick disks in a cluster environment
• Constraining nuclear star cluster formation using MUSE-AO observations of the early-type galaxy FCC47
• The Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function at the Dawn of Gaia
• A SITELLE view of M31's central region - I: Calibrations and radial velocity catalogue of nearly 800 emission-line point-like sources
• The kinematics of the outer halo of M87 as mapped by planetary nebulae
• The Carnegie Chicago Hubble Program X: Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to NGC 5643 and NGC 1404
• Planetary nebulae and stellar kinematics in the flattened elliptical galaxy NGC 1344
• Calibrating Type Ia Supernovae using the Planetary Nebula Luminosity Function I. Initial Results
• The halo of M49 and its environment as traced by planetary nebulae
• Emission line objects in NGC 6822. New Planetary Nebula candidates
• A Survey for Planetary Nebulae in M31 Globular Clusters
• Fornax 3D project: automated detection of planetary nebulae in the centres of early-type galaxies and first results
• The Planetary Nebulae Population in the Nuclear Regions of M31: the SAURON view
• YZiCS: On the Mass Segregation of Galaxies in Clusters
• Clustering of Local Group distances: publication bias or correlated measurements? VI. Extending to Virgo cluster distances
• The Fornax 3D project: PNe populations and stellar metallicity in edge-on galaxies