The Extragalactic Distance Database: Color-Magnitude Diagrams

The color-magnitude diagrams/tip of the red giant branch (CMDs/TRGB) section of the Extragalactic Distance Database contains a compilation of observations of nearby galaxies from the Hubble Space Telescope. Approximately 250 (and increasing) galaxies in the Local Volume have CMDs and the stellar photometry tables used to produce them available through the Web. Various stellar populations that make up a galaxy are visible in the CMDs, but our primary purpose for collecting and analyzing these galaxy images is to measure the TRGB in each. We can estimate the distance to a galaxy by using stars at the TRGB as standard candles. In this paper, we describe the process of constructing the CMDs and make the results available to the public.