A tip of the red giant branch distance to NGC 4038/39 {The Antennae}

Details A tip of the red giant branch distance to NGC 4038/39 {The Antennae} A tip of the red giant branch distance to NGC 4038/39 {The Antennae}

Jul 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005hst..prop10580s&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #10580

Computer Science

Hst Proposal Id #10580 Star Formation

Scientific paper

We propose to use ACS to determine a tip of the red giant branch {TRGB} distance to the merger system archetype NGC4038/39 {"The Antennae"}. This system is the closest major merger to us, but its distance remains a point of debate, with proposed values ranging from 14 to 33 Mpc. Our previous HST/WFPC2 V, I band observation targeted the star forming {SF} regions near the tip of the southern tail of NGC4038. These data revealed a background population of red stars far from SF regions which we identify as RGB stars. The TRGB was detected near our completeness limit at about 26.5 mag, suggesting a distance of 13.8+/-1.7 Mpc, 30% lower than the most accepted distance of 21 Mpc, and less than half the distance of 29 Mpc adopted to characterize the "ultraluminous X-ray binaries" {UXB} sources discovered in recent Chandra observations by Fabbiano et al. {2001}. The lower distance has profound implications for the mass and luminosities of all sources associated with The Antennae, such as the Tidal Dwarf candidates, the globular cluster system, and the UXB population. With its greater sensitivity and higher resolution, ACS can resolve this issue in just a few orbits. We therefore request seven orbits to obtain V, I band images of the southern tail of NGC4038/39 to reach 1.6 mag lower than the TRGB, for our proposed distance modulus. Even if the larger distance is the correct one, our proposed imaging would still give a robust distance constraint from the TRGB.

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