Dust Attenuation in the Nearby Universe: A Comparison between Galaxies Selected in the Ultraviolet and in the Far-Infrared

By V. Buat, J. Iglesias-Páramo, M. Seibert, D. Burgarella, S. Charlot, D. C. Martin, C. Xu, T. Heckman, S. Boissier, A. Boselli and 20 more. 2004

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We compare the dust attenuation properties of two samples of galaxies purely selected in the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) near-ultraviolet band (NUV; 1750-2750 Å, λmean = 2310 Å) and in the far-infrared (FIR) at 60 μm. These samples are built using the GALEX and IRAS sky surveys over ~600 deg2. The NUV-selected sample contains 95 galaxies detected down to NUV = 16 mag (AB system). Eighty-three galaxies in this sample are spiral or irregular, and only two of them are not detected at 60 μm. The FIR-selected sample is built from the IRAS PSCz survey, which is complete down to 0.6 Jy. Among the 163 sources, we select 118 star-forming galaxies that are well measured by IRAS; all but one are detected in NUV, and 14 galaxies are not detected in the far-ultraviolet band (FUV; 1350-1750 Å, λmean = 1530 Å). The dust-to-ultraviolet (NUV and FUV) flux ratio is calibrated to estimate the dust attenuation at both wavelengths. The median value of the attenuation in NUV is found to be ~1 mag for the NUV-selected sample, versus ~2 mag for the FIR-selected one. Within both samples, the dust attenuation is found to correlate with the luminosity of the galaxies. Almost all the NUV-selected galaxies and two-thirds of the FIR-selected sample exhibit a lower dust attenuation than expected from the tight relation found previously for starburst galaxies between dust attenuation and the slope of the ultraviolet continuum. The situation is reversed for the remaining third of the FIR-selected galaxies: their extinction is higher than that deduced from their FUV - NUV color and the relation for starbursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

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Citations in the corpus

Multiwavelength Study of Massive Galaxies at z~2. I. Star Formation and Galaxy Growth (2007, background): “Even more importantly, it is well known that strongest starbursts are opaque to UV radiation and its total SFR activity cannot be reliably estimated solely from the UV, even after reddening corrections (e.g., Goldader et al. 2002; Buat et al. 2005).”
DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. II. COMBINATIONS OF ULTRAVIOLET AND INFRARED TRACERS (2011, methodology): “In nearby star-forming galaxies, the dust attenuation in the UV can vary from zero to several magnitudes (e.g., Buat et al. 2005; Burgarella et al. 2005).”
Star Formation in NGC 5194 (M51a): The Panchromatic View from GALEX to Spitzer (2005, background): “…star–forming galaxies do not follow the IR/UV–UV colors of starburst galax- ies (Buat et al. 2002; Bell 2002; Gordon et al. 2004; Kong et al. 2004; Buat et al. 2005; Seibert et al. 2005): they tend to cover a much broader range in IR/UV at fixed UV color, spreading – 26 – towards lower IR/UV…”
Specific Star Formation Rate Profiles in Nearby Spiral Galaxies: Quantifying the Inside-Out Formation of Disks (2006, methodology): “Once combined with the UV profiles, the radial profiles in the LTIR/LFUV luminosity ratio (or TIR-to-FUV ratio) obtained are converted into AFUV profiles using the polynomial fits of Buat et al. (2005).”
THE CALIBRATION OF MONOCHROMATIC FAR-INFRARED STAR FORMATION RATE INDICATORS (2010, background): “…galaxies, but will lose accuracy both at the low end and high end of the SFSD range (Calzetti, Kinney & Storchi–Bergmann 1994; Meurer, Heckman & Calzetti 1999; Calzetti et al. 2000; Buat et al. 2002; Goldader et al. 2002; Bell 2003; Buat et al. 2005; Calzetti et al. 2005; Seibert et al. 2005).”
THE SPITZER LOCAL VOLUME LEGACY: SURVEY DESCRIPTION AND INFRARED PHOTOMETRY (2009, background): “The distribution of far-ultraviolet extinctions estimated by the infrared-to-ultraviolet-based prescription presented in Buat et al. (2005) is provided in Figure 14.”
The SWIRE-VVDS-CFHTLS surveys: stellar mass assembly over the last 10 Gyr. Evidence for a major build up of the red sequence between z = 2 and z = 1 (2007, methodology): “From the local relation (Martin et al. 2005), a typical L UV(z = 0) galaxy has a LDust/LUV ∼ 3.75, corresponding to AFUV ∼ 1.3 (Buat et al. 2005).”
Star Formation in the Nearby Universe: The Ultraviolet and Infrared Points of View (2006, methodology): “In fact, this is an artifact of the polynomial fitting used to derive a functional form for the attenuation in Buat et al. (2005).”
The Properties of Ultraviolet-luminous Galaxies at the Current Epoch (2004, result): “This range is similar to that of aA ∼ 0.5FUV near-UV–selected sample of galaxies that is representative of the local GALEX population (Buat et al. 2005), and that of LBGs (S01; P01).”
The reversal of the star formation-density relation in the distant universe (2007, background): “However, after the launch of the GALEX satellite, the sample of galaxies with measured LUV and β has largely grown and it was shown that the correlation does not work both for normal galaxies and for IR selected galaxies (Buat et al. 2005, see also Goldader et al. 2002).”
RADIAL DISTRIBUTION OF STARS, GAS, AND DUST IN SINGS GALAXIES. II. DERIVED DUST PROPERTIES (2009, methodology): “Once log(LTIR/LFUV) is known, it can be translated into AFUV using any of the recipes available in the literature (e.g. Buat et al. 2005).”
DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. I. COMBINATIONS OF Hα AND INFRARED TRACERS (2009, methodology): “We have applied the prescriptions of Kong et al. (2004) and Buat et al. (2005), which lie in the mid-range of published calibrations, to FUV and TIR luminosities of the SINGS and MK06 galaxies (Paper II), to derive attenuated-corrected FUV luminosities, and converted these to SFRs using the most…”