Kavli Affiliate: Wendy L. Freedman
| First 5 Authors: Abigail J. Lee, Wendy L. Freedman, Barry F. Madore, Kayla A. Owens, In Sung Jang
| Summary:
The recently-developed J-region Asymptotic Giant Branch (JAGB) method has
extraordinary potential as an extragalactic standard candle, capable of
calibrating the absolute magnitudes of locally-accessible Type Ia supernovae,
thereby leading to an independent determination of the Hubble constant. Using
Gaia Early Data Release 3 (EDR3) parallaxes, we calibrate the zeropoint of the
JAGB method, based on the mean luminosity of a color-selected subset of
carbon-rich AGB stars. We identify Galactic carbon stars from the literature
and use their near-infrared photometry and Gaia EDR3 parallaxes to measure
their absolute J-band magnitudes. Based on these Milky Way parallaxes we
determine the zeropoint of the JAGB method to be M_J = -6.14 +/- 0.05 (stat)
+/- 0.11 (sys) mag. This Galactic calibration serves as a consistency check on
the JAGB zeropoint, agreeing well with previously-published, independent JAGB
calibrations based on geometric, Detached-Eclipsing Binary (DEB) distances to
the LMC and SMC. However, the JAGB stars used in this study suffer from the
high parallax uncertainties that afflict the bright and red stars in EDR3, so
we are not able to attain the higher precision of previous calibrations, and
ultimately will rely on future improved DR4 and DR5 releases.
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