DISTANCE MEASUREMENT OF GALAXIES TO A REDSHIFT OF SIMILAR-TO-0.1 USING THE CO-LINE TULLY-FISHER RELATION

We report on the first results of a long-term project to derive the di stances of galaxies at cosmological distances by applying the CO-line width-luminosity relation. We have obtained deep CO-line observations of galaxies at redshifts of up to cz similar to 29000 km s(-1) using t he Nobeyama 45-m mm-wave telescope; also, some supplementary data were obtained using the IRAM 30-m telescope. We have detected CO-line emis sion from several galaxies, and used their CO-line widths to estimate the absolute luminosities based on the line-width-luminosity relation. In order to obtain photometric data and an inclination correction, we also performed optical imaging observations of the CO-detected galaxi es using the CFHT 3.6-m telescope at high resolution. The radio and op tical data have been combined to derive the distance moduli and distan ces of the galaxies; also, the Hubble ratios were estimated for these galaxies. We propose that the CO-line width-luminosity relation can be a powerful method to derive the distances of galaxies to redshifts of z similar to 0.1, and to derive the Hubble ratio within a significant volume of the universe.