WISE TF: A Mid-infrared, 3.4-micron Extension of the Tully-Fisher
  Relation Using WISE Photometry
  We present a mid-infrared Tully-Fisher (TF) relation using photometry from
the 3.4-micron W1 band of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)
satellite. The WISE TF relation is formed from 568 galaxies taken from the
all-sky 2MASS Tully-Fisher (2MTF) galaxy catalog, spanning a range of
environments including field, group, and cluster galaxies. This constitutes the
largest mid-infrared TF relation constructed, to date. After applying a number
of corrections to galaxy magnitudes and line widths, we measure a master TF
relation given by M_corr = -22.24 - 10.05[log(W_corr) - 2.5], with an average
dispersion of sigma_WISE = 0.686 magnitudes. There is some tension between WISE
TF and a preliminary 3.6-micron relation, which has a shallower slope and
almost no intrinsic dispersion. However, our results agree well with a more
recent relation constructed from a large sample of cluster galaxies. We
additionally compare WISE TF to the near-infrared 2MTF template relations,
finding a good agreement between the TF parameters and total dispersions of
WISE TF and the 2MTF K-band template. This fact, coupled with typical galaxy
colors of (K - W1) ~ 0, suggests that these two bands are tracing similar
stellar populations, including the older, centrally-located stars in the
galactic bulge which can (for galaxies with a prominent bulge) dominate the
light profile.
