A 3% SOLUTION: DETERMINATION OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT WITH THEHUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPEAND WIDE FIELD CAMERA 3

2011/03/10 by Adam G. Riess, Lucas Macri, Lucas M. Macri +9 · 63 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Computer science #Constant (computer programming) #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Field (mathematics) #Galaxy #History and Developments in Astronomy #Hubble Deep Field #Hubble Deep Field South #Hubble Ultra-Deep Field #Hubble space telescope #Hubble's law #Mathematics #Physics #Redshift #Space (punctuation) #astro-ph.CO

paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/730/2/119

published as ApJ, 730, 119, 2011 · 56 pages, 10 figures

openalex publication_date 2011/03/10 · arxiv created 2011/03/15 · arxiv updated 2015/05/27 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We use the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to determine the Hubble constant from optical and infrared observations of over 600 Cepheid variables in the host galaxies of eight recent Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), providing the calibration for a magnitude–redshift relation based on 253 SNe Ia. Increased precision over past measurements of the Hubble constant comes from five improvements: (1) more than doubling the number of infrared observations of Cepheids in the nearby SN hosts; (2) increasing the sample size of ideal SN Ia calibrators from six to eight; (3) increasing by 20% the number of Cepheids with infrared observations in the megamaser host NGC 4258; (4) reducing the difference in the mean metallicity of the Cepheid comparison samples between NGC 4258 and the SN hosts from Δlog [O/H] = 0.08 to 0.05; and (5) calibrating all optical Cepheid colors with a single camera, WFC3, to remove cross-instrument zero-point errors. The result is a reduction in the uncertainty in H 0 due to steps beyond the first rung of the distance ladder from 3.5% to 2.3%. The measurement of H 0 via the geometric distance to NGC 4258 is 74.8 ± 3.1 km s −1 Mpc −1 , a 4.1% measurement including systematic uncertainties. Better precision independent of the distance to NGC 4258 comes from the use of two alternative Cepheid absolute calibrations: (1) 13 Milky Way Cepheids with trigonometric parallaxes measured with HST /fine guidance sensor and Hipparcos and (2) 92 Cepheids in the Large Magellanic Cloud for which multiple accurate and precise eclipsing binary distances are available, yielding 74.4 ± 2.5 km s −1 Mpc −1 , a 3.4% uncertainty including systematics. Our best estimate uses all three calibrations but a larger uncertainty afforded from any two: H 0 = 73.8 ± 2.4 km s −1 Mpc −1 including systematic errors, corresponding to a 3.3% uncertainty. The improved measurement of H 0 , when combined with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP ) 7 year data, results in a tighter constraint on the equation-of-state parameter of dark energy of w = −1.08 ± 0.10. It also rules out the best-fitting gigaparsec-scale void models, posited as an alternative to dark energy. The combined H 0 + WMAP results yield N eff = 4.2 ± 0.7 for the number of relativistic particle species in the early universe, a low-significance excess for the value expected from the three known neutrino flavors.

Citations

• A 4% Geometric Distance to the Galaxy NGC4258 from Orbital Motions in a Nuclear Gas Disk
• Measurements of Ω and Λ from 42 High‐Redshift Supernovae
• THE EFFECT OF HOST GALAXIES ON TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE IN THE SDSS-II SUPERNOVA SURVEY
• Cosmological Parameters from the Comparison of the 2MASS Gravity Field with Peculiar Velocity Surveys
• Observational Evidence from Supernovae for an Accelerating Universe and a Cosmological Constant
• Final Results from theHubble Space TelescopeKey Project to Measure the Hubble Constant
• Correlated fluctuations in luminosity distance and the importance of peculiar motion in supernova surveys
• A New Cepheid Distance to the Maser‐Host Galaxy NGC 4258 and Its Implications for the Hubble Constant
• The Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS)
• The Hubble Constant
• Cepheid Calibration of the Peak Brightness of Type Ia Supernovae. XI. SN 1998aq in NGC 3982
• The Chemical Composition of the Sun

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Related

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