Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances with JWST. II. I-band Measurements in a Sample of Hosts of 10 Type Ia Supernova Match HST Cepheids

The Hubble Tension, a >5σ discrepancy between direct and indirect measurements of the Hubble constant (H 0), has persisted for a decade and motivated intense scrutiny of the paths used to infer H 0. Comparing independently derived distances for a set of galaxies with different standard candles, such as the tip of the red giant branch (TRGB) and Cepheid variables, can test for systematics in the middle rung of the distance ladder. The I band is the preferred filter for measuring the TRGB due to constancy with color, a result of low sensitivity to population differences in age and metallicity supported by stellar models. We use James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations with the maser host NGC 4258 as our geometric anchor to measure I-band (F090W versus F090W − F150W) TRGB distances to eight hosts of 10 Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) within 28 Mpc: NGC 1448, NGC 1559, NGC 2525, NGC 3370, NGC 3447, NGC 5584, NGC 5643, and NGC 5861. We compare these with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Cepheid-based relative distance moduli for the same galaxies and anchor. We find no evidence of a difference between their weighted means, 0.01 ± 0.04 (stat) ± 0.04 (sys) mag. We produce 14 variants of the TRGB analysis, altering the smoothing level and color range used to measure the tips to explore their impact. For some hosts, this changes the identification of the strongest peak, but this causes little change to the sample mean difference, producing a full range of 0.00-0.02 mag, all consistent at 1σ with no difference. The result matches past comparisons of I-band TRGB and Cepheids when both use HST. SNe and anchor samples observed with JWST are too small to yield a measure of H 0 that is competitive with the HST sample of 42 SNe Ia and 4 anchors; however, they already provide a vital systematic cross-check to HST measurements of the distance ladder.

Duke Scholars

Author Daniel M. Scolnic Physics