The distance to M96 from H-band Cepheid observations

Details The distance to M96 from H-band Cepheid observations The distance to M96 from H-band Cepheid observations

Dec 1997

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1997hst..prop.7261t&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #7261

Physics

Hst Proposal Id #7261 Cosmology

Scientific paper

Determination of the Hubble constant is a primary goal of HST. A number of galaxies have already been observed for Cepheids using WFPC2 to obtain V and I-band photometry. Tanvir Etal 1995 found the distance to the spiral galaxy M96 {NGC3368} in the Leo-I group, and argued that this galaxy was particularly appropriate for calibrating the many elliptical galaxy secondary distance indicators, since there is good evidence that M96 is close to the central ellipticals in the group. Hence they estimated H_0=69+/-8kmsmpc. Here we are proposing to obtain infrared H-band {F160W} observations of a sample of the Cepheids in M96 and the dwarf galaxy UGC5889 with NICMOS. Infrared observations have a number of crucial advantages for Cepheid distance determination, specifically {a} a much reduced sensitivity to extinction {and variations in dust properties}, which also results in a lower sensitivity to calibration uncertainties, {b} reduced sensitivity to metallicity variations and {c} reduced dispersion around the period-luminosity relation. Thus these observations should provide a considerably improved distance to the Leo-I group, and a test of the results already obtained using V and I photometry. Combining the new distances with the recent studies of early-type galaxy secondary indicators in the Leo-I group should give an estimate of H_0 to better than 10 free of potentially unknown systematics due to dust and metallicity, and independent of the velocity of the group.

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