2021ApJ...908...24G -
Astrophys. J., 908, 24-24 (2021/February-2)
Measuring distances to low-luminosity galaxies using surface brightness fluctuations.
GRECO J.P., VAN DOKKUM P., DANIELI S., CARLSTEN S.G. and CONROY C.
Abstract (from CDS):
We present an in-depth study of surface brightness fluctuations (SBFs) in low-luminosity stellar systems. Using the MIST models, we compute theoretical predictions for absolute SBF magnitudes in the LSST, HST ACS/WFC, and proposed Roman Space Telescope filter systems. We compare our calculations to observed SBF-color relations of systems that span a wide range of age and metallicity. Consistent with previous studies, we find that single-age population models show excellent agreement with observations of low-mass galaxies with 0.5 <= g - i <= 0.9. For bluer galaxies, the observed relation is better fit by models with composite stellar populations. To study SBF recovery from low-luminosity systems, we perform detailed image simulations in which we inject fully populated model galaxies into deep ground-based images from real observations. Our simulations show that LSST will provide data of sufficient quality and depth to measure SBF magnitudes with precisions of ∼0.2-0.5 mag in ultra-faint (104≤ M*/M☉≤ 105) and low-mass classical (M* <= 107 M☉) dwarf galaxies out to ∼4 Mpc and ∼25 Mpc, respectively, within the first few years of its deep-wide-fast survey. Many significant practical challenges and systematic uncertainties remain, including an irreducible "sampling scatter" in the SBFs of ultra-faint dwarfs due to their undersampled stellar mass functions. We nonetheless conclude that SBFs in the new generation of wide-field imaging surveys have the potential to play a critical role in the efficient confirmation and characterization of dwarf galaxies in the nearby universe.
Abstract Copyright:
© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Journal keyword(s):
Dwarf galaxies - Distance indicators - Stellar populations - Low surface brightness galaxies
Simbad objects:
5
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