The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. V. Measurement and Recalibration of Surface Brightness Fluctuations and a Precise Value of the Fornax--Virgo Relative Distance

Understand

We present g-z color and z-band surface brightness fluctuations (SBF) measurements for 43 early-type galaxies in the Fornax cluster imaged with HST/ACS.

• These are combined with measurements for Virgo cluster galaxies to derive a revised, nonlinear calibration of the z-band SBF absolute magnitude as a function of g-z.
• In all, we tabulate recalibrated SBF distances for 134 galaxies in Virgo, Fornax, the Virgo W' group, and NGC4697 in the Virgo Southern Extension.
• The calibration procedure yields a precise relative distance modulus for Fornax with respect to Virgo of 0.42+/-0.03 mag, or a distance ratio 1.214 +/- 0.017.