New Constraints on the Star Formation Histories and Dust Attenuation of Galaxies in the Local Universe from GALEX

By S. Salim, S. Charlot, R. Rich, G. Kauffmann, T. Heckman, T. Barlow, L. Bianchi, Y. Byun, J. Donas, K. Forster and 16 more. 2004

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We derive a variety of physical parameters including star formation rates (SFRs), dust attenuation, and burst mass fractions for 6472 galaxies observed by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) and present in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 1 (SDSS DR1) main spectroscopic sample. Parameters are estimated in a statistical way by comparing each observed broadband spectral energy distribution (SED) (two GALEX and five SDSS bands) with an extensive library of model galaxy SEDs, which cover a wide range of star formation histories and include stochastic starbursts. We compare the constraints derived using SDSS bands only with those derived using the combination of SDSS and GALEX photometry. We find that the addition of the GALEX bands leads to significant improvement in the estimation of both the dust optical depth and the star formation rate over timescales of 100 Myr to 1 Gyr in a galaxy. We attain sensitivity to SFRs as low as 10-3 M☉ yr-1, and we find that low levels of star formation (SF) are mostly associated with early-type, red galaxies. The least massive galaxies have ratios of current to past-averaged SF rates (b-parameter) consistent with constant SF over a Hubble time. For late-type galaxies, this ratio on average decreases with mass. We find that b correlates tightly with NUV - r color, implying that the SF history of a galaxy can be constrained on the basis of the NUV - r color alone. The fraction of galaxies that have undergone a significant starburst episode within the last 1 Gyr steeply declines with mass, from ~20% for galaxies with ~108 M☉ to ~5% for ~1011 M☉ galaxies.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e28032c47860fd86f485e59f2e98bc766116048

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Citations in the corpus

New insights into the stellar content and physical conditions of star-forming galaxies at z = 2-3 from spectral modelling (2008, methodology): “The details of this grid of models have been described by Gallazzi et al. (2005) and Salim et al. (2005, 2007); we refer the interested reader to those papers for a full discussion of how they are generated.”
Post-starburst galaxies: more than just an interesting curiosity (2008, methodology): “We create a library of exponentially declining star formation histories with superposed stochastic top-hat bursts (see Kauffmann et al. 2003 and Salim et al. 2005 for descriptions of similar libraries).”
The ages and metallicities of galaxies in the local universe (2005, methodology): “The dependence of the properties of SDSS galaxies on stellar mass has been addressed in previous studies (e.g. Shen et al. 2003; Brinchmann et al. 2004; Kannappan 2004; Tremonti et al. 2004; Jimenez et al. 2005; Salim et al. 2005).”
The Properties of Ultraviolet-luminous Galaxies at the Current Epoch (2004, methodology): “Salim et al. (2005) and Brinchmann et al. (2004) have shown that the specific star formation rates in galaxies correlate strongly with the FUV-optical colors and the 4000 breakÅ amplitude (D4000), respectively.”
Star Formation in AEGIS Field Galaxies since z = 1.1: The Dominance of Gradually Declining Star Formation, and the Main Sequence of Star-forming Galaxies (2007, background): “Constraints on Episodic Star Formation Studies based on local samples (Brinchmann et al. 2004; Salim et al. 2005 for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey; Lee 2006) have illustrated a relationship between the SFR and andM∗ have identified two populations: galaxies on a star-forming sequence and “quenched”…”
The UV-Optical Color Magnitude Diagram. II. Physical Properties and Morphological Evolution On and Off of a Star-forming Sequence (2007, result): “This result is in agreement with Brinchmann et al. (2004) and Salim et al. (2005), which both reported a population of high star formation rate, high concentration galaxies.”
The stellar masses of 25 000 galaxies at 0.2 ≤ z ≤ 1.0 estimated by the COMBO-17 survey (2006, background): “Stellar masses estimated in these ways are consistent at the ∼ 0.1 dex level (e.g., Bell et al. 2003; Drory et al. 2004b; Salim et al. 2005) and correlate strongly with dynamically-measured masses (e.g., Bell & de Jong 2001; Drory et al. 2004a; van der Wel et al. 2005; Cappellari et al. 2005).”
WHAT TURNS GALAXIES OFF? THE DIFFERENT MORPHOLOGIES OF STAR-FORMING AND QUIESCENT GALAXIES SINCE z ∼ 2 FROM CANDELS (2011, background): “The slope and scatter of this relationship is well-documented and studied (e.g., Salim et al. 2005; Zheng et al. 2007; Noeske et al. 2007; Karim et al. 2011); it is a remarkable coincidence that the zero point in terms of 24µm flux varies so little with redshift, owing to the interplay between the…”
The VIMOS VLT deep survey: the assembly history of the stellar mass in galaxies: from the young to the old universe (2007, unknown): “Thus, we have computed masses following a different approach, which has been intensively used in previous studies of SDSS galaxies (e.g. Kauffmann et al. 2003; Brinchmann et al. 2004; Salim et al. 2005; Gallazzi et al. 2005).”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, methodology): “The star formation rate of a galaxy can also be estimated from fits to the ultraviolet through nearIR multiband photometry (e.g. Salim et al. 2005).”
Deep GALEX Imaging of the COSMOS HST Field: A First Look at the Morphology of z ~ 0.7 Star-forming Galaxies (2007, background): “…three possible origins for the presence of UV-light in elliptical galaxies: residual star formation (e.g. Teplitz et al. 2006; Yi et al. 2005; Salim et al. 2005; Stanford et al. 2004; Menanteau et al. 2001), FUV-upturn from evolved hot horizontal-branch stars (O’Connell 1999; Brown et al.…”
Bursty stellar populations and obscured active galactic nuclei in galaxy bulges (2007, methodology): “The set of models, based on the BC03 stellar population synthesis code, is similar to that used in Kauffmann et al. (2003b) and Salim et al. (2005), although with more restricted parameter ranges.”
The COSMOS2015 galaxy stellar mass function . Thirteen billion years of stellar mass assembly in ten snapshots (2017, background): “Compared to (U − V) versus (V − J), which is often referred to as UV J, the use of (NUV − r) makes NUVrJ more sensitive to recent star formation (on 106−108 yr scales Salim et al. 2005; Arnouts et al. 2007).”
THE DEPENDENCE OF QUENCHING UPON THE INNER STRUCTURE OF GALAXIES AT 0.5 ⩽ z < 0.8 IN THE DEEP2/AEGIS SURVEY (2012, background): “Later measurementsof star formation rates confirmed that blue galaxies create stars at a high rate while red galaxies show little to no star formation (Salim et al. 2005, 2007; Noeske et al. 2007; Zheng et al. 2007).”
CONFIRMATION OF A STAR FORMATION BIAS IN TYPE Ia SUPERNOVA DISTANCES AND ITS EFFECT ON THE MEASUREMENT OF THE HUBBLE CONSTANT (2014, background): “This prior leads to a typical AFUV = 2.0 ± 0.6 mag for large FUV−NUV uncertainties (see also Salim et al. 2005).”
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): “We have used this model to construct a library of star formation histories that includes stochastic bursts (see Kauffmann et al. 2003; and Salim et al. 2005, for similar libraries).”