SIMBAD references

Given the recent successful launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, determining robust calibrations of the slopes and absolute magnitudes of the near- to mid-infrared tip of the red-giant branch (TRGB) will be essential to measuring precise extragalactic distances via this method. Using ground-based data of the Large Magellanic Cloud from the Magellanic Clouds Photometric Survey along with near-infrared (NIR) data from 2MASS and mid-infrared (MIR) data collected as a part of the SAGE survey using the Spitzer Space Telescope, we present slopes and zero-points for the TRGB in the optical (VI), NIR (JHK), and MIR ([3.6] and [4.5]) bandpasses. These calibrations utilize stars +0.3 ± 0.1 mag below the tip, providing a substantial statistical improvement over previous calibrations which only used the sample of stars narrowly encompassing the tip.