Seeking the Local Convergence Depth. v. Tully-fisher Peculiar Velocities for 52 Abell Clusters

We have obtained I band Tully-Fisher (TF) measurements for 522 late-type galaxies in the fields of 52 rich Abell clusters distributed throughout the sky between ∼50 and 200h Mpc. Here we estimate corrections to the data for various forms of observational bias, most notably Malmquist and cluster population incompleteness bias. The bias-corrected data are applied to the construction of an I band TF template, resulting in a relation with a dispersion of 0.38 magnitudes and a kinematical zero-point accurate to 0.02 magnitudes. This represents the most accurate TF template relation currently available. Individual cluster TF relations are referred to the average template relation to compute cluster peculiar motions. The line-of-sight dispersion in the peculiar motions is 341± 43 km s, in general agreement with that found for the cluster sample of Giovanelli and coworkers. Subject headings: galaxies: distances and redshifts — cosmology: observations; distance scale