Netherlands Astronomy Conference 2026

The first Surface Brightness Fluctuations measurements of nearby red dwarfs in the Local Universe using Euclid data in the optical and infrared

Not scheduled

15m

Lamoraalzaal (Hotel Zuiderduin)

Poster Posters Poster Session 1

Speaker

Anouk Zuiderwijk (Universiteit Gent)

Description

Surface Brightness Fluctuations (SBF) provide redshift-independent galaxy distances and probe stellar populations through pixel-to-pixel brightness variations. With the high resolution Euclid data it is now possible to use this method to determine distances of dwarf galaxies in the whole Local Universe up to 50 Mpc.
In this work, Euclid data is used to measure SBF magnitudes and colors for red dwarf galaxies in the Dorado Group and Fornax Cluster. Comparison with Habas et al. confirms the reliability of the analysis pipeline. Our preliminary analysis shows that we can obtain SBF measurements in the near-infrared H band for these systems, enabling an initial exploration of SBF colors. These are the first ever infrared SBF measurements of dwarf galaxies.
This method will be used in a PhD-project to confirm dwarf galaxies in different environments, by estimating their size from the SBF distance.