OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY AND NEBULAR OXYGEN ABUNDANCES OF THE SPITZER/SINGS GALAXIES

By John Moustakas, Robert C. Kennicutt Jr., Christy A. Tremonti, D. Dale, John-David T. Smith, D. Calzetti. 2010

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We present intermediate-resolution optical spectrophotometry of 65 galaxies obtained in support of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS). For each galaxy we obtain a nuclear, circumnuclear, and semi-integrated optical spectrum designed to coincide spatially with mid- and far-infrared spectroscopy from the Spitzer Space Telescope. We make the reduced, spectrophotometrically calibrated one-dimensional spectra, as well as measurements of the fluxes and equivalent widths of the strong nebular emission lines, publically available. We use optical emission-line ratios measured on all three spatial scales to classify the sample into star-forming, active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and galaxies with a mixture of star formation and nuclear activity. We find that the relative fraction of the sample classified as star forming versus AGN is a strong function of the integrated light enclosed by the spectroscopic aperture. We supplement our observations with a large database of nebular emission-line measurements of individual H ii regions in the SINGS galaxies culled from the literature. We use these ancillary data to conduct a detailed analysis of the radial abundance gradients and average H ii-region abundances of a large fraction of the sample. We combine these results with our new integrated spectra to estimate the central and characteristic (globally averaged) gas-phase oxygen abundances of all 75 SINGS galaxies. We conclude with an in-depth discussion of the absolute uncertainty in the nebular oxygen abundance scale.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0d8ea10cc79f6b840adfe77857a2a5b98ed77eab

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Citations in the corpus

The Herschel Dwarf Galaxy Survey - I. Properties of the low-metallicity ISM from PACS spectroscopy (2015, methodology): “In the SINGS galaxies, it is 12 + log(O/H) = 8.4 with the Pilyugin & Thuan (2005) calibration and 12+ log(O/H) = 9.0 with the Kobulnicky & Kewley (2004) calibration (Moustakas et al. 2010), with larger discrepancies in the methods for massive galaxies (Kewley & Ellison 2008).”
New fully empirical calibrations of strong-line metallicity indicators in star forming galaxies (2016, background): “…to oversimplified assumptions made in most of the photoionization models, e.g. about the geometry of the nebulae and the age of the ionizing source (Moustakas et al. 2010) and on the other hand to temperature gradients and fluctuations that may cause an overestimate of the electron temperature and…”
Investigations of dust heating in M81, M83 and NGC 2403 with the Herschel Space Observatory (2011, methodology): “The galaxy does contain a low luminosity active galactic nucleus (AGN; Markoff et al. 2008; Moustakas et al. 2010) that could affect the observed spectral energy distribution (SED) for the nuclear region.”
THE PdBI ARCSECOND WHIRLPOOL SURVEY (PAWS): ENVIRONMENTAL DEPENDENCE OF GIANT MOLECULAR CLOUD PROPERTIES IN M51 (2014, background): “Bresolin et al. (2004), and Moustakas et al. (2010) both found a metallicity close to solar with only a shallow radial gradient of −(0.02 ± 0.01) dex kpc−1, so we do not expect metallicity-dependent variations in the conversion factor across the PAWS FoV (see, e.g., Leroy et al. 2011, 2012).”
THE EMISSION BY DUST AND STARS OF NEARBY GALAXIES IN THE HERSCHEL KINGFISH SURVEY (2011, methodology): “The metallicity dependence of the dust/stellar correlation (Figure 5b) is similar to the morphology dependence, because of the relation between morphology and metallicity (e.g., Moustakas et al. 2010).”
The impact of gas inflows on star formation rates and metallicities in barred galaxies (2011, methodology): “Finally, our abundances are determined identically for every galaxy, so that we do not have to be concerned with either metallicity zero-point offsets (Kewley & Ellison 2008) or differences in gradients that may be introduced by different strong line methods (Moustakas et al. 2010).”
THE CO-TO-H2 CONVERSION FACTOR AND DUST-TO-GAS RATIO ON KILOPARSEC SCALES IN NEARBY GALAXIES (2012, background): “To explore any metallicity trends that may be washed out due to systematic effects when combining metallicities from different sources, we isolate a sample of galaxies with uniformly determined metallicities from Moustakas et al. (2010) and plot those separately in Figure 10.”
MOLECULAR GAS AND STAR FORMATION IN NEARBY DISK GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “…by dividing τmoldep for each point by the average for that galaxy, and mark points from the inner kpc of our targets with large symbols: blue dots for galaxies with some spectroscopic indication of an AGN (Moustakas et al. 2010, or NED) and green stars show star-formation dominated regions.”
THE ORIGIN AND OPTICAL DEPTH OF IONIZING RADIATION IN THE “GREEN PEA” GALAXIES (2013, background): “Kaaret et al. (2004) report the detection of strong He ii λ4686 emission, with a luminosity of 2.7×1036 ergs s−1 , around a ULX nebula in Holmberg II; the galaxy has a metallicity near 0.2 Z⊙(Moustakas et al. 2010).”
Gas-to-dust mass ratios in local galaxies over a 2 dex metallicity range (2013, background): “On smaller scales within galaxies, differences can occur due to inhomogeneous mixing of metals: metallicity gradients have been observed in large spiral 3 R23 = ([OII]λ3727+[OIII]λλ4959, 5007)/Hβ. galaxies (Garnett et al. 2004; Bendo et al. 2010; Moustakas et al. 2010).”
A MOLECULAR STAR FORMATION LAW IN THE ATOMIC-GAS-DOMINATED REGIME IN NEARBY GALAXIES (2011, methodology): “For galaxies without a Moustakas et al. (2010) metallicity, we adopt a metallicity equal to the average of their B–band luminosity– metallicity relations.”
The assembly of ‘normal’ galaxies at z ∼ 7 probed by ALMA (2015, methodology): “ALMA observations of normal galaxies at z∼7 11 priv. comm.) and from Moustakas et al. (2010) (in the latter we have used the calibrations from Pilyugin & Thuan 2005).”
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, background): “The optical spectra largely come from Moustakas & Kennicutt (2006) and Moustakas et al. (2010), with some additional spectra from Kennicutt (1992) and Gavazzi et al. (2004).”
RECONSTRUCTING THE STELLAR MASS DISTRIBUTIONS OF GALAXIES USING S4G IRAC 3.6 AND 4.5 μm IMAGES. I. CORRECTING FOR CONTAMINATION BY POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS, HOT DUST, AND INTERMEDIATE-AGE STARS (2011, background): “…NGC 4321 and NGC 5194 (M51) (see Table 1), were chosen for their range of morphological properties, dust contents, and star formation histories from SINGS (Kennicutt et al. 2003 and see, e.g., Draine et al. 2007, Calzetti 2007, Bendo et al. 2008, Muñoz-Mateos et al. 2009b, Moustakas et al. 2010).”
Metallicity gradients in local field star-forming galaxies: insights on inflows, outflows, and the coevolution of gas, stars and metals (2015, background): “Disk galaxies in the local Universe universally exhibit negative metallicity gradients, i.e., the centre of a galaxy has a higher metallici y than the outskirts (e.g.,Zaritsky et al. 1994; Moustakas et al. 2010; Rupke et al. 2010b; Sánchez et al. 2014, and references therein).”
Mass-metallicity relation explored with CALIFA I. Is there a dependence on the star-formation rate? (2013, background): “Some of these issues are partially solved when a large aperture is used to derive the spectra of each galaxy, as in the case of drift-scan observations (e.g. Moustakas et al. 2010; Hughes et al. 2012).”
The role of cold gas and environment on the stellar mass-metallicity relation of nearby galaxies (2012, methodology): “…data with emission line measurements from integrated spectra presented in Gavazzi et al. (2004), Kennicutt (1992), Jansen et al. (2000), Moustakas & Kennicutt (2006) and Moustakas et al. (2010), a homogeneous dataset of the spectral properties of 236 of the 260 HRS late-types has been assembled.”
REGULARITY UNDERLYING COMPLEXITY: A REDSHIFT-INDEPENDENT DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTINUOUS VARIATION OF GALAXY-SCALE MOLECULAR GAS PROPERTIES IN THE MASS-STAR FORMATION RATE PLANE (2013, unknown): “Metallicity estimates for most of the selected HERACLES spirals are provided in Moustakas et al. (2010).”
A fundamental relation between the metallicity, gas content, and stellar mass of local galaxies (2013, methodology): “While Schruba et al. (2012) give metallicities taken from a variety of sources (primarily Moustakas et al. 2010), in order to remain as consistent as possible we re-derive metallicities using the method described above (i.e. taking the mean of the metallicity derived using the [N II]λ6584/Hα ratio…”