Morris, Nathaniel; Jensen, Joseph (Utah Valley University)
Faculty Advisor: Jensen, Joseph (Utah Valley University, Physics)
We measured the brightness of Milky Way stars to determine if they have an effect on extragalactic surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) distance measurements. When SBF measurements are made on background galaxies near the Galactic plane, we observe a large number of stars in the foreground. With most SBF measurements, we can mask out the brightest stars, and make measure SBF with a relatively uncontaminated background. This becomes more difficult with galaxies that are close to the Galactic plane because there are many more foreground stars, and undetected fainter stars that escape the masking process can bias the distance measurement. My research will determine if these unmasked foreground stars have a significant effect on the SBF measurements on these galaxies near the Galactic plane.