The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. III. the Distance to NGC 1365 via the Tip of the Red Giant Branch

In Sung Jang, Dylan Hatt, Rachael L. Beaton, Myung Gyoon Lee, Wendy L. Freedman, Barry F. Madore, Taylor J. Hoyt, Andrew J. Monson, Jeffrey A. Rich, Victoria Scowcroft, Mark Seibert

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

45 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program (CCHP) seeks to anchor the distance scale of Type Ia supernovae via the Tip of the Red Giant Branch (TRGB) method. Based on deep Hubble Space Telescope ACS/WFC imaging, we present an analysis of the TRGB for the metal-poor halo of NGC 1365, a giant spiral galaxy in the Fornax cluster that was host to the Type Ia supernova SN 2012fr. We have measured the extinction-corrected TRGB magnitude of NGC 1365 to be F814W =27.34 ±0.03stat ±0.04sys mag. In advance of future direct calibration by Gaia, we adopt a provisional I-band TRGB luminosity set at the Large Magellanic Cloud and find a true distance modulus μ 0 =31.29 ±0.04stat ±0.06sys mag or D =18.1 ±0.3stat ±0.5sys Mpc. This measurement is in excellent agreement with recent Cepheid-based distances to NGC 1365 and reveals no significant difference in the distances derived from stars of Populations I and II for this galaxy. We revisit the error budget for the CCHP path to the Hubble constant based on the analysis presented here, i.e., that for one of the most distant Type Ia supernova hosts within our Program, and find that a 2.5% measurement is feasible with the current sample of galaxies and TRGB absolute calibration.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number60
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume852
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2018

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Carnegie-Chicago Hubble Program. III. the Distance to NGC 1365 via the Tip of the Red Giant Branch'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this