Semiresolved Stellar Populations as Distance Indicators
Abstract
Galaxy distances are central to our understanding of the Universe. Despite the success of existing approaches, independent and complementary methods remain valuable for testing systematic effects and extending the applicability range of different distance metrics. Here we demonstrate that the spectrum of an individual semi-resolved stellar population encodes direct information about its distance and that valuable distance constraints can, in principle, be obtained by combining multiple independent measurements. When applied to optical spectra of bulge of the Andromeda galaxy (M\,31), we derive a stellar population-based distance of 756±57 kpc (μ0 = 24.39 ± 0.15), in agreement with state-of-the-art measurements. Crucially, semi-resolved stellar population distances does not require secondary calibrations, although its absolute scale remains conditional on the adopted stellar population models. Our findings provide a first assessment of the feasibility of deriving stellar population-based distance estimates from simple stellar population models, motivating further tests of the broader applicability and precision of the method.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{martinnavarro2026semiresolved,
title = {{Semiresolved Stellar Populations as Distance Indicators}},
author = {Ignacio Martín-Navarro and Patricia Iglesias Navarro and Francesco La Barbera and Alexandre Vazdekis and Michael A. Beasley and Marc Huertas-Company and ChangHoon Hahn and Luis Peralta de Arriba and Isaac Alonso Asensio and Eirini Angeloudi and Miguel Cerviño and Katja Fahrion and Tereza Jerabkova and Jesús Falcón-Barroso and Sebastián F. Sánchez and Prashin Jethwa},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.01400},
eprint = {2609.01400},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01400},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Semiresolved Stellar Populations as Distance Indicators
AU - Ignacio Martín-Navarro
AU - Patricia Iglesias Navarro
AU - Francesco La Barbera
AU - Alexandre Vazdekis
AU - Michael A. Beasley
AU - Marc Huertas-Company
AU - ChangHoon Hahn
AU - Luis Peralta de Arriba
AU - Isaac Alonso Asensio
AU - Eirini Angeloudi
AU - Miguel Cerviño
AU - Katja Fahrion
AU - Tereza Jerabkova
AU - Jesús Falcón-Barroso
AU - Sebastián F. Sánchez
AU - Prashin Jethwa
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.01400
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01400
AB - Galaxy distances are central to our understanding of the Universe. Despite the success of existing approaches, independent and complementary methods remain valuable for testing systematic effects and extending the applicability range of different distance metrics. Here we demonstrate that the spectrum of an individual semi-resolved stellar population encodes direct information about its distance and that valuable distance constraints can, in principle, be obtained by combining multiple independent measurements. When applied to optical spectra of bulge of the Andromeda galaxy (M\,31), we derive a stellar population-based distance of 756±57 kpc (μ_0 = 24.39 ± 0.15), in agreement with state-of-the-art measurements. Crucially, semi-resolved stellar population distances does not require secondary calibrations, although its absolute scale remains conditional on the adopted stellar population models. Our findings provide a first assessment of the feasibility of deriving stellar population-based distance estimates from simple stellar population models, motivating further tests of the broader applicability and precision of the method.
ER -