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The distance to NGC 4993 : the host galaxy of the gravitational-wave event GW170817
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Hjorth, Jens, Levan, Andrew J., Tanvir, Nial R., Lyman, J. D., Wojtak, Radosław, Schrøder, Sophie L., Mandel, Ilya, Gall, Christa and Bruun, Sofie H. (2017) The distance to NGC 4993 : the host galaxy of the gravitational-wave event GW170817. The Astrophysical Journal, 848 (2). L31. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/aa9110
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WRAP-distance-NGC-4993-host-galaxy-gravitational-wave-event-GW170817-Levan-2017.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (3080Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa9110
Abstract
The historic detection of gravitational waves from a binary neutron star merger (GW170817) and its electromagnetic counterpart led to the first accurate (sub-arcsecond) localization of a gravitational-wave event. The transient was found to be ∼1000 from the nucleus of the S0 galaxy NGC 4993. We report here the luminosity distance to this galaxy using two independent methods. (1) Based on our MUSE/VLT measurement of the heliocentric redshift (zhelio = 0.009783±0.000023) we infer the systemic recession velocity of the NGC 4993 group of galaxies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) frame to be vCMB = 3231±53 km s−1 . Using constrained cosmological simulations we estimate the line-of-sight peculiar velocity to be vpec = 307±230 km s−1 , resulting in a cosmic velocity of vcosmic = 2924±236 km s−1 (zcosmic = 0.00980±0.00079) and a distance of Dz = 40.4±3.4 Mpc assuming a local Hubble constant of H0 = 73.24± 1.74 km s−1Mpc−1 . (2) Using Hubble Space Telescope measurements of the effective radius (15. 005±1. 005) and contained intensity and MUSE/VLT measurements of the velocity dispersion, we place NGC 4993 on the Fundamental Plane (FP) of E and S0 galaxies. Comparing to a frame of 10 clusters containing 226 galaxies, this yields a distance estimate of DFP = 44.0±7.5 Mpc. The combined redshift and FP distance is DNGC4993 = 41.0±3.1 Mpc. This ‘electromagnetic’ distance estimate is consistent with the independent measurement of the distance to GW170817 as obtained from the gravitational-wave signal (DGW = 43.8 +2.9 −6.9 Mpc) and confirms that GW170817 occurred in NGC 4993.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||||||||
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| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy | ||||||||||||||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science > Physics | ||||||||||||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Gravitational waves -- Measurement, Neutron stars, Red shift, Galaxies -- Measurement | ||||||||||||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | The Astrophysical Journal | ||||||||||||||||||
| Publisher: | Institute of Physics Publishing, Inc. | ||||||||||||||||||
| ISSN: | 0004-637X | ||||||||||||||||||
| Official Date: | 16 October 2017 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 848 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Number: | 2 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Article Number: | L31 | ||||||||||||||||||
| DOI: | 10.3847/2041-8213/aa9110 | ||||||||||||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||||||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||||||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||||||||||||
| RIOXX Funder/Project Grant: |
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