The ground-state rotational band in 159Tb

162 MeV ⁴⁰Ca ions have been used to Coulomb excite the ground-state band of ¹⁵⁹Tb up to spin $\text{25}\text{2}$. Lifetimes for levels up to spin $\text{25}\text{2}$ have been determined with DSA and recoil distance methods. Multipole mixing ratios for several cascade transitions were extracted from an analysis of γ-ray angular correlation data. Reduced transition probabilities thus deduced in a model-independent way were found to be in agreement with the rotational model with Q₀ = 7.41 ± 0.06 e · b and g_K?g_R = 1.377 ± 0.010.