Calibration of the mid-IR Tully-Fisher relation

The correlation between galaxy luminosities and rotation rates can be used to determine the distances to many thousands of galaxies in a wide range of environments potentially out to 200Mpc. Mid-infrared (3.6{mu}m) photometry with the Spitzer Space Telescope is particularly valuable as a source of luminosities because it provides products of uniform quality across the sky.

From a perch above the atmosphere, essentially the total magnitude of targets can be registered in exposures of a few minutes. Extinction is minimal and the flux is dominated by the light from old stars, which is expected to correlate with the mass of the targets. In spite of the superior photometry, the correlation between mid-infrared luminosities and rotation rates extracted from neutral hydrogen profiles is slightly degraded from the correlation found with I-band luminosities.