Distances to PHANGS Galaxies: New Tip of the Red Giant Branch
  Measurements and Adopted Distances
  PHANGS-HST is an ultraviolet-optical imaging survey of 38 spiral galaxies
within ~20 Mpc. Combined with the PHANGS-ALMA, PHANGS-MUSE surveys and other
multiwavelength data, the dataset will provide an unprecedented look into the
connections between young stars, HII regions, and cold molecular gas in these
nearby star-forming galaxies. Accurate distances are needed to transform
measured observables into physical parameters (e.g., brightness to luminosity,
angular to physical sizes of molecular clouds, star clusters and associations).
PHANGS-HST has obtained parallel ACS imaging of the galaxy halos in the F606W
and F814W bands. Where possible, we use these parallel fields to derive tip of
the red giant branch (TRGB) distances to these galaxies. In this paper, we
present TRGB distances for 11 galaxies from ~4 to ~15 Mpc, based on the first
year of PHANGS-HST observations. Five of these represent the first published
TRGB distance measurements (IC 5332, NGC 2835, NGC 4298, NGC 4321, and NGC
4328), and eight of which are the best available distances to these targets. We
also provide a compilation of distances for the 118 galaxies in the full PHANGS
sample, which have been adopted for the first PHANGS-ALMA public data release.
