An Empirical Calibration of the Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distance Method in the Near Infrared. II. JWST NIRCam Wide Filters

The tip of the red giant (TRGB) is a standardizable candle and isidentifiable as the discontinuity at the bright extreme of the red giant branch(RGB) stars in color-magnitude diagram (CMD) space. The TRGB-based distancemethod has been calibrated and used to measured distances to galaxies out toD≤20 Mpc with the I-band equivalent Hubble Space Telescope (HST)F814W filter, and as an important rung in the distance ladder to measure theHubble constant, H_0. In the infrared (IR), the TRGB apparent magnituderanges from 1-2 magnitudes brighter than in the optical, and now with the IRJames Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observatory the feasible distance range ofthe TRGB method can be extended to ∼50 Mpc. However, in the IR the TRGBluminosity depends to varying degrees on stellar metallicity and age. In thisstudy we standardize the TRGB luminosity using stellar colors as a proxy formetallicity/age to derive color-based corrections for the JWST Near-InfraredCamera (NIRCam) short wavelength (SW) filters F090W, F115W, F150W and thelong wavelength (LW) filters F277W, F356W, and F444W. We providerecommended filter combinations for distance measurements depending on therequisite precision. For science requiring high precision (≤1% indistance) and robustness we recommend measuring the TRGB in F090W vsF090W-F150W or F115W vs. F115W-F277W with the caveat that even withJWST long integration times will be necessary at further distances. If lowerprecision (>1.5% in distance) can be tolerated, or if shorter integrationtimes are desirable, we recommend measuring the TRGB in either F115W orF150W paired with F356W. We do not recommend F444W for precision TRGBmeasurements due to its lower angular resolution.