Distance and Reddening of the Isolated Dwarf Irregular Galaxy NGC 1156

TL;DR

This study estimates the distance and reddening of the isolated dwarf galaxy NGC 1156 using HST data, providing refined measurements that align with previous estimates and highlighting the galaxy's properties.

Contribution

First photometric estimation of both distance and reddening for NGC 1156 using HST data, improving accuracy over previous estimates.

Findings

Total reddening E(B-V)=0.35 mag estimated from color-color diagram.

Distance modulus (m-M)_0=29.39 mag corresponding to 7.6 Mpc.

Good agreement with previous distance estimates.

Abstract

We present a photometric estimation of the distance and reddening values to the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 1156, which is one of the best targets to study the isolated dwarf galaxies in the nearby universe. We have used the imaging data sets of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) High Resolution Channel (HRC) of the central region of NGC 1156 (26" X 29") available in the HST archive for this study. From the (U-B, B-V) color-color diagram, we first estimate the total (foreground + internal) reddening toward NGC 1156 of E(B-V) =0.35 +/- 0.05 mag, whereas only the foreground reddening was previously known to be E(B-V)=0.16 mag (Burstein & Heiles) or 0.24 mag (Schlegel, Finkbeiner, & Davis). Based on the brightest stars method, selecting the three brightest blue supergiant (BSG) stars with mean B magnitude of <B(3B)> = 21.94 mag and the three brightest red supergiant (RSG) stars with mean V magnitude of <V(3R)> = 22.76 mag, we derive the distance modulus to NGC 1156 to be (m-M)_{0,BSG} = 29.55 mag and (m-M)_{0,RSG} = 29.16 mag. By using weights of 1 and 1.5 for the distance moduli from using the BSGs and the RSGs, respectively, we finally obtain the weighted mean distance modulus to NGC 1156 (m-M)_0 = 29.39 +/- 0.20 mag (d = 7.6 +/- 0.7 Mpc), which is in very good agreement with the previous estimates. Combining the photometry data of this study with those of Karachentsev et al. gives smaller distance to NGC 1156, which is discussed together with the limits of the data.