Infrared Surface Brightness Fluctuation Distances for MASSIVE and Type Ia Supernova Host Galaxies

Understand

We measured high-quality surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distances for a sample of 63 massive early-type galaxies using the WFC3/IR camera on the Hubble Space Telescope.

• The median uncertainty on the SBF distance measurements is 0.085 mag, or 3.9% in distance.
• Achieving this precision at distances of 50 to 100 Mpc required significant improvements to the SBF calibration and data analysis procedures for WFC3/IR data.
• Forty-two of the galaxies are from the MASSIVE Galaxy Survey, a complete sample of massive galaxies within ~100 Mpc; the SBF distances for these will be used to improve the estimates of the stellar and central supermassive black hole masses in these galaxies.