Carbon Stars as Standard Candles: An Empirical Test for the Reddening, Metallicity, and Age Sensitivity of the J-region Asymptotic Giant Branch (JAGB) Method

Understand

The J-region Asymptotic Giant Branch (JAGB) method is a standard candle based on the intrinsic luminosities of carbon stars in the near infrared.

• We directly constrain the impact of metallicity, age, and reddening on the JAGB method.
• We assess how the mode, skew, and spread of the JAGB star luminosity function change throughout diverse stellar environments in M31's NE disk from 13<d<18 kpc using data from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury (PHAT).
• As expected, the mode is found to be fainter in higher-reddening regions.