From Spitzer Galaxy Photometry to Tully-Fisher Distances

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive data release of galaxy photometry from the Cosmicflows with Spitzer campaign, extending the Tully-Fisher relation calibration and refining the Hubble constant estimate.

Contribution

It provides new surface photometry data for over 1,600 galaxies, including low galactic latitude regions, and confirms the robustness of the Tully-Fisher calibration.

Findings

Hubble constant estimated at 75.2 +/- 3.3 km/s/Mpc

Extended galaxy catalog by 20%, including Zone of Avoidance

Confirmed robustness of Tully-Fisher calibration

Abstract

This paper involves a data release of the observational campaign: Cosmicflows with Spitzer (CFS). Surface photometry of the 1270 galaxies constituting the survey is presented. An additional ~ 400 galaxies from various other Spitzer surveys are also analyzed. CFS complements the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies, that provides photometry for an additional 2352 galaxies, by extending observations to low galactic latitudes (|b|<30 degrees). Among these galaxies are calibrators, selected in K band, of the Tully-Fisher relation. The addition of new calibrators demonstrate the robustness of the previously released calibration. Our estimate of the Hubble constant using supernova host galaxies is unchanged, H0 = 75.2 +/- 3.3 km/s/Mpc. Distance-derived radial peculiar velocities, for the 1935 galaxies with all the available parameters, will be incorporated into a new data release of the Cosmicflows project. The size of the previous catalog will be increased by 20%, including spatial regions close to the Zone of Avoidance.