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Sharpening the Tip of the Red Giant Branch

Barry F. Madore, Violet Mager, Wendy L. Freedman

Open publisher page 28 citations

Abstract

We introduce a modified detection method for measuring the luminosity of the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) by introducing the composite magnitude T ≡ I −β[(V −I) ◦ −1.50], where β is the slope of the tip magnitude as a function of color (or metallicity). The method is specifically designed to account for known systematics due to metallicity. In doing so, this simple transformation does away with arbitrary color selections in measuring the tip, and thereby significantly boosts the population of resolved stars that go into defining the TRGB distance. Moreover this method coincidentally reduces the impact of reddening on the true modulus as well as its final uncertainty.

About this research paper

What this paper is about

We introduce a modified detection method for measuring the luminosity of the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) by introducing the composite magnitude T ≡ I −β[(V −I) ◦ −1.50], where β is the slope of the tip magnitude as a function of color (or metallicity). The method is specifically designed to account for known systematics due to metallicity. In doing so, this simple transformation does away with arbitrary color selections in measuring the tip, and thereby significantly boosts the population of resolved stars that go into defining the TRGB distance. Moreover this method coincidentally reduces the impact of reddening on the true modulus as well as its final uncertainty.

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OpenAlex reports 28 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

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Available abstract

We introduce a modified detection method for measuring the luminosity of the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) by introducing the composite magnitude T ≡ I −β[(V −I) ◦ −1.50], where β is the slope of the tip magnitude as a function of color (or metallicity). The method is specifically designed to account for known systematics due to metallicity. In doing so, this simple transformation does away with arbitrary color selections in measuring the tip, and thereby significantly boosts the population of resolved stars that go into defining the TRGB distance. Moreover this method coincidentally reduces the impact of reddening on the true modulus as well as its final uncertainty.

Key concepts: Red-giant branch, Metallicity, Distance modulus, Sharpening, Magnitude (astronomy), Physics, Astrophysics, Luminosity function

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