Open AccessSBF distances to Leo and Virgo using the HST
Author(s) -
Morris P. W.,
Shanks T.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-8711.1998.01623.x
Subject(s) - physics , virgo cluster , astrophysics , moduli , galaxy , surface brightness , distance modulus , elliptical galaxy , metallicity , quantum mechanics
We use archive HST WFPC2 data for three elliptical galaxies (NGC 3379 in the Leo I group, and NGC 4472 and 4406 in the Virgo cluster) to determine their distances using the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method as described by Tonry &38; Schneider. A comparison of the HST results with the SBF distance moduli found by Ciardullo et al. shows significant disagreement and suggests that the rms error on these ground‐based distance moduli is actually as large as ± 0.25 mag. The agreement is only slightly improved when we compare our results with the HST and ground‐based SBF distances from Ajhar et al. and Tonry et al.; the comparison suggests that a lower limit on the error of the HST SBF distance moduli is ± 0.17 mag. Overall, these results suggest that previously quoted measurement errors may underestimate the true error in SBF distance moduli by at least a factor of 2–3.