Seeking the Local Convergence Depth. V. Tully-Fisher Peculiar Velocities for 52 Abell Clusters

We have obtained I-band Tully-Fisher (T-F) measurements for 522 late-type galaxies in the fields of 52 rich Abell clusters distributed throughout the sky between ∼50 and 200 h-1 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 T-F template, resulting in a relation with a dispersion of 0.38 mag and a kinematic zero point accurate to 0.02 mag. This represents the most accurate T-F template relation currently available. Individual cluster T-F relations are referred to the average template relation to compute cluster peculiar motions. The line-of-sight dispersion in the peculiar motions is 341 ± 93 km s-1, in general agreement with that found for the cluster sample of Giovanelli and coworkers.