The Hα and Infrared Star Formation Rates for the Nearby Field Galaxy Survey

By Lisa J. Kewley, Margaret J. Geller, R. Jansen, M. Dopita. 2002

164 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the Hα and infrared star formation rate (SFR) diagnostics for galaxies in the Nearby Field Galaxy Survey (NFGS). For the 81 galaxies in our sample, we derive Hα fluxes (included here) from integrated spectra. There is a strong correlation between the ratio of far-infrared to optical luminosities L(FIR)/L(Hα) and the extinction E(B-V) measured with the Balmer decrement. Before reddening correction, the SFR(IR) and SFR(Hα) are related to each other by a power law: SFR(IR) = (2.7 ± 0.3)SFR(Hα)1.30±0.06. Correction of the SFR(Hα) for extinction using the Balmer decrement and a classical reddening curve both reduces the scatter in the SFR(IR)-SFR(Hα) correlation and results in a much closer agreement between the two SFR indicators; SFR(IR) = (0.91 ± 0.04)SFR(Hαcorr)1.07±0.03. SFR(IR) and SFR(Hα) agree to ∼10%. This SFR relationship spans 4 orders of magnitude and holds for all Hubble types with IRAS detections in the NFGS. A constant ratio between the SFR(IR) and SFR(Hα) for all Hubble types, including early types (S0–Sab), suggests that the IR emission in all these objects results from a young stellar population.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2683ccef1c6754d4425dc4b5c66c270854d8215a

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Citations in the corpus

Connecting Dense Gas Tracers of Star Formation in our Galaxy to High-z Star Formation (2005, background): “…scale, including luminous and ultraluminous starburst galaxies, there is a correlation between the total luminosity of far-infrared emission, which traces the star formation rate (e.g. Sanders and Mirabel 1996; Kewley et al. 2002), and the total luminosity of CO, tracing the molecular gas mass.”
Star Formation in NGC 5194 (M51a): The Panchromatic View from GALEX to Spitzer (2005, background): “…of emission are used as SFR tracers in star–forming/starburst galaxies: the infrared emission measures the dust-reprocessed stellar continuum emission from massive stars, while the ionized gas emission is proportional to the number of ionizing photons (e.g., Kennicutt 1998a; Kewley et al. 2002).”
Optical Star Formation Rate Indicators (2005, unknown): “…accuracy remains limited by a wide range of systematic uncertainties (Cram et al. 1998; Glazebrook et al. 1999; Bell & Kennicutt 2001; Sullivan et al. 2001; Hopkins et al. 2001, 2003; Charlot et al. 2002; Rosa-González et al. 2002; Kewley et al. 2002, 2004; Hirashita et al. 2003; Bell 2003).”
Metallicity and Nuclear Star Formation in Nearby Galaxy Pairs: Evidence for Tidally Induced Gas Flows (2005, methodology): “For the purposes of metallicity comparisons, we compare galaxies within the same luminosity range of −21.5 ≤ MB ≤ −18. as described in Kewley et al. (2002).”
Aperture Effects on Star Formation Rate, Metallicity, and Reddening (2005, methodology): “Any error introduced by the diagnostics is likely to be systematic (see Kewley et al. 2002; Kobulnicky & Kewley 2004, for a discussion).”
THEORETICAL EVOLUTION OF OPTICAL STRONG LINES ACROSS COSMIC TIME (2013, background): “However, current lensed samples still do not sample the full range of star formation rates seen in the global spectra of local normal star forming galaxies ( SFR > 0.01 M⊙/yr Kewley et al. 2002).”
THE COSMIC CORE-COLLAPSE SUPERNOVA RATE DOES NOT MATCH THE MASSIVE-STAR FORMATION RATE (2011, background): “For spirals it can be as high as50%–70%, but for the star forming galaxies that dominate at high redshifts it is expected to be much smaller (Lonsdale Persson & Helou 1987; Kewley et al. 2002).”
Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, methodology): “For example, Kewley et al. (2002) showed that for a sample of spiral galaxies with integrated emission-line spectra, the TIR-based calibration of K98 for dusty starburst galaxies was in good agreement with SFRs based on attenuation-corrected Hα line fluxes.”
The SAGA Survey. I. Satellite Galaxy Populations around Eight Milky Way Analogs (2017, methodology): “Star formation rates are determined from the total IRAS fluxes (Moshir et al. 1992), using the transformations of Kewley et al. (2002).”
The Calibration of Mid-Infrared Star Formation Rate Indicators (2007, background): “…by assumptions on the underlying stellar absorption and on the form of the high end of the stellar initial mass function (e.g., Calzetti, Kinney & Storchi–Bergmann 1994; Kennicutt 1998a; Hopkins et al. 2001; Sullivan et al. 2001; Kewley et al. 2002; Rosa–Gonzalez, Terlevich & Terlevich 2002).”
Near-Infrared and Star-forming Properties of Local Luminous Infrared Galaxies (2006, result): “We also show in this figure data for galaxies from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid sample (UCM, Pérez-González et al. 2003) and the Nearby Field Galaxy Sample (NFGS, Kewley et al. 2002) with available Hα imaging, and extinction corrections derived from the Balmer decrement.”
DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. I. COMBINATIONS OF Hα AND INFRARED TRACERS (2009, background): “…cirrus contamination tend to be of roughly comparable magnitude in typical massive star-forming spiral galaxies, and thanks to this coincidence the SFRs derived from IR measures are often surprisingly consistent with those derived from other methods (e.g., Sauvage & Thuan 1992; Kewley et al. 2002).”
[O II] as a Star Formation Rate Indicator (2004, methodology): “We assumed errors of 30% as in Kewley et al. (2002).”
PAH and Mid-Infrared Luminosities as Measures of Star Formation Rate in Spitzer First Look Survey Galaxies (2005, methodology): “Kewley et al. (2002) showed that SFRs derived from Ha emission are similar to those derived from IR emission even at an SFR of 0.01M, yr 1.”
THE CALIBRATION OF MONOCHROMATIC FAR-INFRARED STAR FORMATION RATE INDICATORS (2010, background): “…light from those stars emerges, to the radio, which is mostly a tracer of supernova activity (e.g., Kennicutt 1998; Yun, Reddy & Condon 2001; Kewley et al. 2002; Ranalli, Comastri & Setti 2003; Hirashita, Buat & Inoue 2003; Bell 2003; Kewley, Geller & Jansen 2004; Calzetti et al. 2005;…”
Star Formation Rate Indicators in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2003, background): “…LFIR ≤ Lc, (8) and Lc = 2.186 × 10 37W. LFIR is the luminosity corresponding to the FIR flux as defined above, and the factor of 1.75 in Equation 7 converts this to a luminosity representative of the full (8−1000µm)mid- to far-infrared spectrum (for details see Bell 2003; Kewley et al. 2002).”
COMPARISON OF Hα AND UV STAR FORMATION RATES IN THE LOCAL VOLUME: SYSTEMATIC DISCREPANCIES FOR DWARF GALAXIES (2009, background): “…the average amount of nebular extinction in galaxies is supported by studies that have shown that the scatter between infrared-based SFRs and Hα SFRs is decreased when the Hα luminosity is corrected for extinction in this manner (e.g., Dopita et al. 2002; Kewley et al. 2002; Moustakas et al. 2006).”