A new technique will be used for measuring surface brightness fluctuations of galaxies. Surface brightness fluctuations in external galaxies and globular clusters are the pixel-to- pixel fluctuations that arise from the counting statistics of the unresolved stars in each pixel. This fluctuation amplitude varies inversely as the distance of the galaxy, and is proportional to the luminosity of the giant stars, and therefore can be used as a new and independent determination of extragalactic distances, and as a probe of stellar populations. The real strength of this technique is that it gives distances based on the luminosity of ordinary giant stars and so avoids the traditional "extragalactic distance ladder," which has proven so hard to pin down reliably. The theoretical basis of this measurement, and observations the show that the technique is feasible to distances of at least 20 Mpc has been carried out. Three phases of effort will be carried out: 1) a rich sample of equidistant galaxies in the Virgo cluster, which will serve to calibrate the method, will be observed; 2) galaxies in the local supercluster and in nearby clusters will then be observed. To map the Virgo infall and other large-scale motions; and 3) a theoretical analysis of stellar populations which should permit a more reliable determination of the Hubble constant using this method, and which also can provide interesting insights into stellar populations in systems where individual stars cannot be resolved, will be performed. Some fraction of time will be allotted to other projects such as working on the southern sky redshift survey, collating the data and creating a final, uniform catalog.
