We have detected the tip of the Red Giant Branch ( TRGB ) in the solar neighborhood using near infrared photometry from the 2MASS and DIRBE catalogs , and revised Hipparcos parallaxes .
We confirm that the revised Hipparcos parallaxes are superior to the original ones , and that this improvement is necessary to detect the TRGB .
We find a tip absolute magnitude of M _ { K } = -6.85 \pm 0.03 , in agreement with that expected from previous tip measurements of the Large Magellanic Cloud , Small Magellanic Cloud , and Bulge .
This represents the first geometric calibration of the TRGB and extends previous calibrations , based on metal-poor globular clusters , to solar metallicities .
We attempted to use the TRGB to confirm the presence of the Lutz-Kelker bias , with inconclusive results .
Attempts to detect the tip in the I -band also produced inconsistent results , due to a lack of precise , homogeneous photometry for these bright stars .