The SBF Survey of Galaxy Distances. IV. SBF Magnitudes, Colors, and Distances 1

Abstract

We report data for I band Surface Brightness Fluctuation (SBF) magnitudes, (V −I) colors, and distance moduli for 300 galaxies. The Survey contains E, S0 and early-type spiral galaxies in the proportions of 49:42:9, and is essentially complete for E galaxies to Hubble velocities of 2000 km s −1, with a substantial sampling of E galaxies out to 4000 km s −1. The median error in distance modulus is 0.22 mag. We also present two new results from the Survey. (1) We compare the mean peculiar flow velocity (bulk flow) implied by our distances with predictions of typical cold dark matter transfer functions as a function of scale, and find very good agreement with cold, dark matter cosmologies if the transfer function scale parameter Γ, and the power spectrum normalization σ8 are related by σ8Γ −0.5 ≈ 2 ± 0.5. Derived directly from velocities, this result is independent of the distribution of galaxies or models for biasing. The modest bulk flow contradicts reports of large-scale, large-amplitude flows in the ∼ 200 Mpc diameter volume surrounding our Survey volume. (2) We present a distanceindependent measure of absolute galaxy luminosity, N, and show how it correlates with