I-Band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) Stars: II. A First Estimate of their Precision and a Differential Zero Point

TL;DR

This study estimates the absolute magnitude of I-band Asymptotic Giant Branch stars using HST data across 92 galaxies, providing a new, precise zero point for these stars as standard candles for distance measurement.

Contribution

It offers the first large-sample, extinction-independent estimate of IAGB stars' luminosity and compares it with geometry-based zero points, enhancing their reliability as distance indicators.

Findings

The mean apparent magnitude difference between IAGB and TRGB is -0.589 mag.

The estimated absolute magnitude of IAGB stars is -4.64 +/- 0.12 mag.

IAGB stars can be used as standard candles out to at least 9 Mpc.

Abstract

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of 92 galaxies that have a strong showing of I-band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) stars in their color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), are used to measure the relative offset between the mean apparent I-band magnitudes of the IAGB population and the corresponding apparent I-band magnitudes of the TRGB as measured in the same frames (and CMDs) of those individual galaxies. This first exploratory, large-sample comparison is independent of any extinction (foreground or internal) that may be shared by these two populations. The marginalized luminosity functions used to determine the modal value of the {\it IAGB } population are well fit by a single, symmetric Gaussian. The difference in the two apparent magnitudes (in the sense IAGB minus TRGB) is -0.589 mag, with a combined standard deviation of +/- 0.119 mag. Adopting M_I = -4.05 mag for the TRGB stars, the modal absolute magnitude of the IAGB is then calculated to be M_I(IAGB) = -4.64 +/- 0.12 mag. The ensemble dispersion quoted above gives a standard error on the mean of +/- 0.012 mag (based on the full sample of 92 galaxies). Independently, the three geometry-based zero points for I-band AGB stars are found (in Paper I) to be M_I = -4.49 +/- 0.003~mag in the LMC (4204 stars), M_I = -4.67 +/- 0.008 mag, for the SMC (916 stars) and M_I = -4.78 +/- 0.030 mag for NGC4258 (62 stars), leading to a global zero-point (weighted) average of <M_I> = -4.64 +/- 0.15 mag (stat). The scatter found in the anchors is comparable to the scatter in the field sample discussed here, but the calibration sample is small. The application of this method to galaxies well outside of the Local Group, shows that these standard candles can readily be found and measured out to at least 9 Mpc, using already available archival data