Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances with JWST. II. I-band Measurements in a Sample of Hosts of 10 SN Ia Match HST Cepheids

Abstract

The Hubble Tension, a >5 sigma discrepancy between direct and indirect measurements of the Hubble constant (H0), has persisted for a decade and motivated intense scrutiny of the paths used to infer H0. Comparing independently-derived distances for a set of galaxies with different standard candles, such as the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) and Cepheid variables, can test for systematics in the middle rung of the distance ladder. The I band is the preferred filter for measuring the TRGB due to constancy with color, a result of low sensitivity to population differences in age and metallicity supported by stellar models. We use James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations with the maser host NGC 4258 as our geometric anchor to measure I-band (F090W vs F090W-F150W) TRGB distances to 8 hosts of 10 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) within 28 Mpc: NGC 1448, NGC 1559, NGC 2525, NGC 3370, NGC 3447, NGC 5584, NGC 5643, and NGC 5861. We compare these with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Cepheid-based relative distance moduli for the same galaxies and anchor. We find no evidence of a difference between their weighted means, 0.01 +/- 0.04 (stat) +/- 0.04 (sys) mag. We produce fourteen variants of the TRGB analysis, altering the smoothing level and color range used to measure the tips to explore their impact. For some hosts, this changes the identification of the strongest peak, but this causes little change to the sample mean difference producing a full range of 0.01 to 0.03 mag, all consistent at 1 sigma with no difference. The result matches past comparisons of I-band TRGB and Cepheids when both use HST. SNe and anchor samples observed with JWST are too small to yield a measure of H0 that is competitive with the HST sample of 42 SNe Ia and 4 anchors; however, they already provide a vital systematic crosscheck to HST measurements of the distance ladder.

15 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables, Accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (38)

• The Astropy Project: Sustaining and Growing a Community-oriented Open-source Project and the Latest Major Release (v5.0) of the Core Package
• 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
• In the Realm of the Hubble tension $-$ a Review of Solutions
• A distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud that is precise to one per cent
• Measurements of the Hubble Constant: Tensions in Perspective
• A distance determination to the Small Magellanic Cloud with an accuracy of better than 2 percent based on late-type eclipsing binary stars
• Distances to PHANGS Galaxies: New Tip of the Red Giant Branch Measurements and Adopted Distances
• Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances. I. Optimization of a Maximum Likelihood Algorithm
• The Hubble Constant from Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances
• Small Magellanic Cloud Cepheids Observed with the Hubble Space Telescope Provide a New Anchor for the SH0ES Distance Ladder
• 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
• The Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies. IV. Color Dependence and Zero-Point Calibration
• Infrared Tip of the Red Giant Branch and Distances to the Maffei/IC 342 Group
• Astrophysical Distance Scale The JAGB Method: I. Calibration and a First Application
• Reconnaissance with JWST of the J-region Asymptotic Giant Branch in Distance Ladder Galaxies: From Irregular Luminosity Functions to Approximation of the Hubble Constant
• Carbon stars as standard candles: I. The luminosity function of carbon stars in the Magellanic Clouds
• The Carnegie Chicago Hubble Program X: Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to NGC 5643 and NGC 1404
• Astrophysical Distance Scale II. Application of the JAGB Method: A Nearby Galaxy Sample
• Determination of the Local Hubble Constant from Virgo Infall Using TRGB Distances
• 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
• The Araucaria Project. Distances to Nine Galaxies Based on a Statistical Analysis of their Carbon Stars (JAGB Method)
• Carbon stars as standard candles: II. The median J magnitude as a distance indicator
• 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
• A BayeSN Distance Ladder: $H_0$ from a consistent modelling of Type Ia supernovae from the optical to the near infrared
• Draining the Local Void
• Comparative Analysis of TRGBs (CATs) from Unsupervised, Multi-Halo-Field Measurements: Contrast is Key
• Milky Way Zero-Point Calibration of the JAGB Method: Using Thermally Pulsing AGB Stars in Galactic Open Clusters
• Carbon stars as standard candles -- III. Un-binned maximum likelihood fitting and comparison with TRGB estimations
• An Empirical Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance Method in the Near Infrared. I. HST WFC3/IR F110W and F160W Filters
• A Gaia Data Release 3 View on the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Luminosity
• The Distance and Motion of the Maffei Group
• A Preliminary Calibration of the JAGB Method Using Gaia EDR3
• 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
• Calibrating and standardizing the Tip of the Red Giant Branch in the Small Magellanic Cloud using small-amplitude red giants
• Distances to Local Group Galaxies via Population II, Stellar Distance Indicators I: The Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal

Cited by in corpus (7)

• TDCOSMO 2025: Cosmological constraints from strong lensing time delays
• The Local Distance Network: a community consensus report on the measurement of the Hubble constant at 1% precision
• Model-independent $H_0$ within FLRW: Joint constraints from GWTC-3 standard sirens and strong lensing time delays
• Two per cent measurement of $H_0$ from Cepheids alone
• The Chicago Carnegie Hubble Program: Improving the Calibration of SNe Ia with JWST Measurements of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch
• Crosschecking Cosmic Distances from DESI BAO and DES SNe
• The Hubble Tension: Relativistic Dark Matter Production from Long-lived Particles