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The Hubble Constant from the Fornax Cluster Distance

Tom Richtler, Georg Drenkhahn, Matias Gomez, Wilhelm Seggewiss

astro-pharXiv:astro-ph/9905080

Abstract

Type Ia supernovae are the best cosmological standard candles available. The intrinsic scatter of their decline-rate- and colour-corrected peak brightnesses in the Hubble diagram is within observational error limits, corresponding to an uncertainty of only 3km/s/Mpc of the Hubble constant. Any additional uncertainty, resulting from peak-brightness calibration, must be kept small by measuring distances to nearby host galaxies most precisely. A number of different distance determinations of the Fornax cluster of galaxies agree well on a distance modulus of 31.35+-0.04mag (18.6+-0.3Mpc). This leads to accurate absolute magnitudes of the well-observed Fornax type Ia SNe SN1980N, SN1981D, and SN1992A and finally to a Hubble constant of H0=72+-6km/s/Mpc.

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