February 15, 2026 – Kavli Institute Pre-Print Publications

I-Band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) Stars: II. A First Estimate of their Precision and a Differential Zero Point

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 23, 2026Chicago

Kavli Affiliate: Wendy Freedman | Summary:Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of 92 galaxies that have a strong showing of I-band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) stars in their color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), are used to measure the relative offset between the mean apparent I-band magnitudes of the IAGB population and the corresponding apparent I-band magnitudes of the […]

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I-Band Asymptotic Giant Branch (IAGB) Stars: I. Exploring a New Standard Candle for the Extragalactic Distance Scale

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 23, 2026Chicago

Kavli Affiliate: Wendy Freedman | Summary:In the I-band color-magnitude diagrams (CMD) of resolved nearby galaxies, the reddest asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars form a previously unremarked-upon, but nevertheless distinct and easily-identified population of high-luminosity stars. Hereafter we refer to this population as being comprised of I-Band AGB (IAGB) stars. Identifying these stars in the Large […]

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S-PLUS: Beyond Spectroscopy IV. Stellar Parameters and Elemental-abundance Ratios for Six Million Stars from DR4 and First Results for the Magellanic Clouds

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 23, 2026Peking

Kavli Affiliate: Huawei Zhang | Summary:We combine narrow/medium-band filter photometry from the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS) DR4 with ultra broad-band filter photometry from Gaia EDR3 to derive fundamental stellar parameters ($T_rm eff$, $log g$, [Fe/H], ages) and elemental-abundance ratios ([C/Fe] and [$α$/Fe]) for 5.4 million stars in the Galaxy (4.9 million dwarfs and […]

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VENUS: Strong-lensing model of MACS J1931.8-2635 — revealing the farthest multiply imaged supernova

Posted by klaurent February 15, 2026February 23, 2026Peking

Kavli Affiliate: Kohei Inayoshi | Summary:We present a parametric strong-lensing model for the galaxy cluster MACS J1931.8-2635 ($z_l = 0.35$), accompanying the detection of the spectroscopically confirmed SN Eos at $z = 5.13$ (Coulter et al. 2026). We identify 10 new multiple-image systems in recent VENUS JWST/NIRCam imaging, so that the model is constrained with […]

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