The JWST Resolved Stellar Populations Early Release Science Program. IX. The RR Lyrae Population in WLM with HST and JWST

TL;DR

This study demonstrates JWST's capability to identify and analyze RR Lyrae stars in the near-infrared, providing a new calibration of the period-Wesenheit-metallicity relation and a precise distance measurement to galaxy WLM.

Contribution

It presents the first calibration of RR Lyrae period-Wesenheit-metallicity relation in JWST NIRCam filters and compares JWST and HST observations for stellar population analysis.

Findings

Reliable RR Lyrae identification in JWST NIRCam data.

Distance modulus to WLM is 24.85±0.05, closer than previous estimates.

First calibration of RR Lyrae PWZ relation in JWST filters.

Abstract

RR Lyrae stars are a common, dependable Population II distance indicator, and provide an independent tracer of early star formation. Here, we utilize archival HST/ACS and JWST/NIRCam observations of the nearby dwarf star-forming galaxy WLM to study RR Lyrae in JWST filters. We independently identify RR Lyrae in HST and JWST imaging in order to evaluate JWST's efficacy at characterizing RR Lyrae in the near-IR. We use an MCMC template-fitting technique to obtain periods, amplitudes, and mean magnitudes from the RR Lyrae time-series data. The spatially overlapping HST and JWST observations allow us to directly compare the same sources observed with the instruments, and calibrate the NIRCam F090W and F150W RR Lyrae period-Wesenheit-metallicity (PWZ) relation to the Gaia-consistent HST PWZ. We additionally assess the epoch-to-epoch consistency of NIRCam photometry, and find evidence of burn-in. We conclude that the zero-point offset is negligible compared to the uncertainties from the template fitting. We conduct an MCMC fit of the PWZ with both HST and JWST data. Our results are three-fold. First, we find that we can reliably identify RR Lyrae in NIRCam data, but light-curve template fitting proves difficult on short-baseline observations. Second, the HST PWZ fit yields a distance modulus to WLM of $\mu = 24.85\pm0.05$ ($0.93\pm0.02$ Mpc). This is closer than previous measurements, primarily attributed to consistency with the Gaia scale. Lastly, although the JWST PWZ fit has large uncertainties and a poorly-constrained slope, it represents a first-of-its-kind PWZ calibration in NIRCam filters.