Blue supergiants and the zero point of the Tully-Fisher relation: a path to a new independent test of the Hubble constant

TL;DR

This paper uses blue supergiant stars to calibrate the Tully-Fisher relation across multiple bands, providing an independent method to estimate the Hubble constant with results supporting values above 73 km/s/Mpc.

Contribution

It introduces a new calibration of the Tully-Fisher relation using blue supergiants, offering an independent test of the Hubble constant.

Findings

H0 estimated at 76.2 km/s/Mpc with large uncertainty

Results support higher Hubble constant values consistent with previous Tully-Fisher studies

No significant differences found compared to Cepheid and TRGB distance methods

Abstract

Blue supergiant distances of nearby galaxies obtained with the flux-weighted gravity-luminosity relationship are used for a measurement of the zero points of Tully-Fisher relationships at different photometric passbands. The Cousins I-band and the infrared WISE bands W1 and W2 are investigated. The results are compared with previous work using Cepheid and Tip-of-the-Red-Giant-Branch distances. No significant differences were encountered. This supports the large values of the Hubble constant greater than 73km/s/Mpc found with the Tully-Fisher distance ladder work over the last decade. Applying blue supergiant distances on the I-band Tully-Fisher relation observations yields a Hubble constant H0 = 76.2+/-6.2 km/s/Mpc. The large uncertainty is caused by the still relatively small blue supergiant galaxies sample size but will be reduced in future work.