2005/06/14 by Simona Mei, S. Mei, Mei, Simona +22
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #CCD and CMOS Imaging Sensors #Calibration and Measurement Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/0506314
23 pages, 7 figures
openalex publication_date 2005/06/14 · arxiv created 2005/06/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
As part of the Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS) Virgo Cluster Survey, we have measured Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) in a sample of 100 early-type Virgo galaxies. Distances derived from these measurements are needed to explore the three-dimensional structure of the Virgo Cluster, study the intrinsic parameters of globular clusters associated with the program galaxies, and compare with the galaxy distances derived from globular cluster luminosity functions. Our SBF measurements have been performed in the F850LP bandpass of the Wide Field Channel of the ACS on the Hubble Space Telescope. These are the first measurements of this kind, and we present the first SBF calibration for this bandpass. The measured fluctuations depend on galaxy stellar population variations, which we quantify by galaxy color (g475-z850)0, where g475 and z850 are the galaxy magnitudes, respectively, in the F475W and F850LP ACS filters. We derive the following calibration for the absolute SBF magnitude M850: M850 = -2.06 +/- 0.04 + (2.0 +/ 0.2) [ (g475-z850)0-1.3 ] in the range 1.3