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E.A. Praton, M.J. Rothrock, Jr. (Franklin & Marshall Coll.), S.E. Schneider (UMass---Amherst)
We investigate possible redshift-space artifacts in the Ursa Major Group near the Virgo Cluster, by using the Tully-Fisher relation between spiral galaxy luminosity and rotation rate as a distance indicator. We use I-band magnitudes from Tully, et al. (1996), H-band magnitudes from the 2MASS database, and HI linewidths compiled from the literature. The slopes of our best-fit lines and the dispersion about the lines are compared to the recent Cepheid variable calibration of the I- and H-band Tully-Fisher relation (Sakai, et al. 2000). We look for evidence that galaxies in an Ursa Major structure, which looks like a finger-of-god redshift-space artifact, may in fact be in close physical association.