EXTENDING THE NEARBY GALAXY HERITAGE WITH WISE: FIRST RESULTS FROM THE WISE ENHANCED RESOLUTION GALAXY ATLAS

By Thomas H. Jarrett, F. Masci, Chaowei Tsai, S. Petty, Michelle E. Cluver, R. Assef, Dominic J. Benford, A. Blain, C. Bridge, E. Donoso and 8 more. 2012

238 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mapped the entire sky at mid-infrared wavelengths 3.4 μm, 4.6 μm, 12 μm, and 22 μm. The mission was primarily designed to extract point sources, leaving resolved and extended sources, for the most part, unexplored. Accordingly, we have begun a dedicated WISE Enhanced Resolution Galaxy Atlas (WERGA) project to fully characterize large, nearby galaxies and produce a legacy image atlas and source catalog. Here we demonstrate the first results of the WERGA project for a sample of 17 galaxies, chosen to be of large angular size, diverse morphology, and covering a range in color, stellar mass, and star formation. It includes many well-studied galaxies, such as M 51, M 81, M 87, M 83, M 101, and IC 342. Photometry and surface brightness decomposition is carried out after special super-resolution processing, achieving spatial resolutions similar to that of Spitzer Infrared Array Camera. The enhanced resolution method is summarized in the first paper of this two-part series. In this second work, we present WISE, Spitzer, and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) photometric and characterization measurements for the sample galaxies, combining the measurements to study the global properties. We derive star formation rates using the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon sensitive 12 μm (W3) fluxes, warm-dust sensitive 22 μm (W4) fluxes, and young massive-star sensitive ultraviolet (UV) fluxes. Stellar masses are estimated using the 3.4 μm (W1) and 4.6 μm (W2) measurements that trace the dominant stellar mass content. We highlight and showcase the detailed results of M 83, comparing the WISE/Spitzer results with the Australia Telescope Compact Array H i gas distribution and GALEX UV emission, tracing the evolution from gas to stars. In addition to the enhanced images, WISE's all-sky coverage provides a tremendous advantage over Spitzer for building a complete nearby galaxy catalog, tracing both stellar mass and star formation histories. We discuss the construction of a complete mid-infrared catalog of galaxies and its complementary role of studying the assembly and evolution of galaxies in the local universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8d23c10fbcc9f5d2c9f7ff3200e066039dfcb053

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Citations in the corpus

A z = 0 Multiwavelength Galaxy Synthesis. I. A WISE and GALEX Atlas of Local Galaxies (2019, methodology): “The Jarrett et al. (2013) value of log10 C = −42.9 for WISE3 translates to ΣSFR 1 M yr −1 kpc−2 ≈ (5) 3.77× 10−3 ( C 10−42.9 )( I12µm 1 MJy sr−1 ) adopting λ = 12µm and converting this to ν.”
Dust spectral energy distributions of nearby galaxies: an insight from the Herschel Reference Survey (2014, methodology): “For WISE photometry of extended sources, Jarrett et al. (2013) recommended 3 corrections to be applied to all measurements.”
AN ATLAS OF GALAXY SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ULTRAVIOLET TO THE MID-INFRARED (2013, background): “Star-forming galaxies and AGNs with SEDs that rise towards longer wavelengths have WISE W4 magnitudes that are at least 10% brighter than what is expected from Spitzer IRS spectrophotometry and Spitzer 24 µm photometry (Wright et al. 2010; Jarrett et al. 2013).”
The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, methodology): “To convert the observed flux levels to a SFR, we use the SFR prescription provided by Kennicutt & Evans (2012) and Jarrett et al. (2013).”
GALAXY AND MASS ASSEMBLY (GAMA): MID-INFRARED PROPERTIES AND EMPIRICAL RELATIONS FROM WISE (2014, methodology): “The primary “isophotal” photometry (W iso) is then measured from the 1σ (of the background rms) elliptical isophote, capturing over 90% of the total light (see Jarrett et al. 2013).”
RECONSTRUCTING THE STELLAR MASS DISTRIBUTIONS OF GALAXIES USING S4G IRAC 3.6 AND 4.5 μm IMAGES. II. THE CONVERSION FROM LIGHT TO MASS (2014, methodology): “6 and [3.6]-[4.5] color to weaken or even reverse (Jarrett et al. 2013) when dust contributes to the [3.6]-[4.5] color and the mass-to-light ratio is therefore Υd3.”
STELLAR MASSES AND STAR FORMATION RATES FOR 1 M GALAXIES FROM SDSS+WISE (2015, methodology): “Jarrett et al. (2013) provided a detailed multi-wavelength study of a small number of objects and will provide an important benchmark to test our results.”
TWO MICRON ALL SKY SURVEY PHOTOMETRIC REDSHIFT CATALOG: A COMPREHENSIVE THREE-DIMENSIONAL CENSUS OF THE WHOLE SKY (2013, background): “The full potential of WISE extragalactic science remains to be explored: for instance, a ‘WISE XSC’, which will incorporate aperture photometry of resolved (extended) sources, is now under construction (see discussion in Jarrett et al. 2013).”