In PROBING STELLAR POPULATIONS OUT TO THE DISTANT
UNIVERSE: CEFALU 2008, Proceedings of the International Conference. AIP
Conference Proceedings, Volume 1111, pp. 27-34 (2009).
astro-ph/0904.0247
For a PDF version of the article, click here.
SURFACE BRIGHTNESS FLUCTUATIONS AS STELLAR POPULATION
INDICATORS
John P. Blakeslee
Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics,
National
Research Council of Canada,
Victoria, B.C. V9E 2E7
Abstract. Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) can provide
useful information about
the unresolved stellar content of early-type galaxies and spiral bulges. The
absolute SBF magnitude 
in a given passband depends on the properties
of the stellar population and can be predicted by population synthesis
models. SBF measurements in different bandpasses are sensitive to different
evolutionary stages within the galaxy stellar population. Near-IR SBF
magnitudes are sensitive to the evolution of stars within the AGB phase,
especially the thermally pulsing AGB, while SBF in the blue and UV are
sensitive to the hot horizontal branch and post-AGB stages. Thus,
multi-band SBF studies can constrain
important evolutionary parameters. Empirically, SBF data at the red end of
the optical spectrum (i, z, and potentially y)
remain excellent distance indicators. I briefly review some recent
work on stellar populations using SBF, primarily from an observational
point of view.
Table of Contents
