Analysis of galaxy spectral energy distributions from far-UV to far-IR with CIGALE: studying a SINGS test sample

By Stefan Noll, D. Burgarella, E. Giovannoli, V. Buat, D. Marcillac, J. Muńoz-Mateos. 2009

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Aims. Photometric data of galaxies covering the rest-frame wavelength range from far-UV to far-IR make it possible to derive galaxy properties with a high reliability by fitting the attenuated stellar emission and the related dust emission at the same time. Methods. For this purpose we wrote the code CIGALE (Code Investigating GALaxy Emission) that uses model spectra composed of the Maraston (or PEGASE) stellar population models, synthetic attenuation functions based on a modified Calzetti law, spectral line templates, the Dale & Helou dust emission models, and optional spectral templates of obscured AGN. Depending on the input redshifts, filter fluxes were computed for the model set and compared to the galaxy photometry by carrying out a Bayesian-like analysis. CIGALE was tested by analysing 39 nearby galaxies selected from SINGS. The reliability of the different model parameters was evaluated by studying the resulting expectation values and their standard deviations in relation to the input model grid. Moreover, the influence of the filter set and the quality of photometric data on the code results was estimated. Results. For up to 17 filters with effective wavelengths between 0.15 and 160 μ m, we find robust results for the mass, star formation rate, effective age of the stellar population at 4000 A, bolometric luminosity, luminosity absorbed by dust, and attenuation in the far-UV. Details of the star formation history (excepting the burst fraction) and the shape of the attenuation curve are difficult to investigate with the available broad-band UV and optical photometric data. A study of the mutual relations between the reliable properties confirms the dependence of star formation activity on morphology in the local Universe and indicates a significant drop in this activity at about 10 11 $M_{\odot}$ towards higher total stellar masses. The dustiest galaxies in the SINGS sample are present in the same mass range. On the other hand, the far-UV attenuation of our sample galaxies does not appear to show a significant dependence on star formation activity. Conclusions. The results for our SINGS test sample demonstrate that CIGALE can be a valuable tool for studying basic properties of galaxies in the near and distant Universe if UV-to-IR data are available.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/02156e0308f8d09f6482e3ef558d34f789aa8476

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Citations in the corpus

GOODS-Herschel: dust attenuation properties of UV selected high redshift galaxies (2012, methodology): “This assumption is supported by the observation of strong interstellar absorption lines in galaxies with significant UV bump (Noll & Pierini, 2005; Noll et al., 2009a), which can be interpreted by a high covering fraction of young massive stars by dusty gas clouds.”
Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, methodology): “The Code Investigating GALaxy Emission (Cigale) was developed from an algorithm described in Burgarella et al. (2005) and formally presented in Noll et al. (2009).”
Panchromatic spectral energy distributions of Herschel sources (2013, methodology): “…but simply randomly picked from a grid of values, the torus is effectively fit to the data in a simultane- ous 3-component model (see also Fritz et al. 2006; Berta et al. 2007; Noll et al. 2009; Santini et al. 2012; Lusso et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012, for alternative implementations).”
Stellar Population Inference with Prospector (2020, methodology): “The dust model is the two-parameter Charlot & Fall (2000) model, plus a flexible attenuation curve (Noll et al. 2009) with the UV bump tied to the slope of the curve (Kriek & Conroy 2013).”
Modelling and interpreting spectral energy distributions of galaxies with BEAGLE (2016, methodology): “…the number of free parameters that can be explored is generally limited (e.g. with grid-based Bayesian techniques; da Cunha, Charlot & Elbaz 2008; Noll et al. 2009; Pacifici et al. 2012); and when more sophisticated (e.g. Markov Chain Monte Carlo, hereafter MCMC) techniques allow the…”
Constraining the properties of AGN host galaxies with spectral energy distribution modelling (2015, methodology): “We refer the reader to Noll et al. (2009) for more information on the Bayesian-like analysis performed by CIGALE.”
Fitting the integrated spectral energy distributions of galaxies (2010, methodology): “A very similar method was followed by (Noll et al. 2009) with the CIGALE code, which uses either the Maraston (2005) or PEGASE codes for the stellar populations and only a Calzetti attenuation law to attenuate the stellar light.”
Near infrared spectroscopy and star-formation histories of 3 ≤ z ≤ 4 quiescent galaxies (2018, methodology): “This same approach was used in CIGALE (Noll et al. 2009; see in particular their Fig.”
A z = 0 Multiwavelength Galaxy Synthesis. I. A WISE and GALEX Atlas of Local Galaxies (2019, methodology): “More sophisticated treatments adopt a population synthesis approach and combine ultraviolet with optical and even infrared data (e.g., Noll et al. 2009; Salim et al. 2016).”
Dust Attenuation Curves in the Local Universe: Demographics and New Laws for Star-forming Galaxies and High-redshift Analogs (2018, methodology): “Hence, we follow the methodology of Noll et al. (2009), implemented in CIGALE, whereby the attenuation curve is defined as a two-parameter modification of the total formulation of the Calzetti curve given in Eq.”
An Older, More Quiescent Universe from Panchromatic SED Fitting of the 3D-HST Survey (2018, methodology): “Spatially complex dust attenuation models have been developed that include extra attenuation toward younger star-forming regions (Charlot & Fall 2000) and flexible attenuation curves (Noll et al. 2009; Salmon et al. 2016; Leja et al. 2017; Salim et al. 2018).”
A fundamental relation between the metallicity, gas content, and stellar mass of local galaxies (2013, methodology): “They have stellar masses derived using SED fitting, given by Noll et al. (2009),1 and H I masses from The H I Nearby Galaxy Survey, THINGS (Walter et al. 2008).”
x-cigale: fitting AGN/galaxy SEDs from X-ray to infrared (2020, methodology): “CIGALE is an efficient SED-fitting code which has been developed for more than a decade (Burgarella et al. 2005; Noll et al. 2009; Serra et al. 2011; Boquien et al. 2019).”
THE EMISSION BY DUST AND STARS OF NEARBY GALAXIES IN THE HERSCHEL KINGFISH SURVEY (2011, background): “Finally, Noll et al. (2009) also estimated stellar masses and SFRs of a sample of galaxies, 32 of which are in our KINGFISH sample.”
Erratum: Recovering galaxy stellar population properties from broad-band spectral energy distribution fitting (2012, background): “…a two-component template, such that a second burst at an arbitrary time is superimposed on an underlying exponentially declining star formation history (Papovich et al. 2001; Gallazzi et al. 2005; Salim et al. 2007; Pozzetti et al. 2007; Walcher et al. 2008; Muzzin et al. 2009; Noll et al. 2009).”
Deriving Physical Properties from Broadband Photometry with Prospector: Description of the Model and a Demonstration of its Accuracy Using 129 Galaxies in the Local Universe (2016, methodology): “For the wavelength scaling, we use the following prescription from Noll et al. (2009): k D 4.05 .”
CIGALE: a python Code Investigating GALaxy Emission (2018, methodology): “(3) from Noll et al. 2009).”