DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. I. COMBINATIONS OF Hα AND INFRARED TRACERS

By Robert C. Kennicutt Jr., C. Hao, D. Calzetti, John Moustakas, D. Dale, G. Bendo, C. Engelbracht, Benjamin D. Johnson, Janice C. Lee. 2009

424 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We combine Hα emission-line and infrared (IR) continuum measurements of two samples of nearby galaxies to derive dust attenuation-corrected star formation rates (SFRs). We use a simple energy balance based method that has been applied previously to H ii regions in the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey, and extend the methodology to integrated measurements of galaxies. We find that our composite Hα + IR based SFRs are in excellent agreement with attenuation-corrected SFRs derived from integrated spectrophotometry, over the full range of SFRs (0.01–80 M☉ yr−1) and attenuations (0–2.5 mag) studied. We find that the combination of Hα and total IR luminosities provides the most robust SFR measurements, but combinations of Hα measurements with monochromatic luminosities at 24 μm and 8 μm perform nearly as well. The calibrations differ significantly from those obtained for H ii regions, with the difference attributable to a more evolved population of stars heating the dust. Our results are consistent with a significant component of diffuse dust (the “IR cirrus” component) that is heated by a non-star-forming population. The same methodology can be applied to [O ii]λ3727 emission-line measurements, and the radio continuum fluxes of galaxies can be applied in place of IR fluxes when the latter are not available. We assess the precision and systematic reliability of all of these composite methods.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dc71a1ecb5925caf72fbedd8ddaba958cedd2c94

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. F. Walter
4. D. Narayanan
5. R. Somerville
6. R. Dav'e
7. C. Conroy
8. Mark R. Krumholz

In Instrumentation

1. C. Conroy
2. A. Shapley
3. P. Hopkins
4. C. Steidel
5. L. Hernquist
6. P. V. van Dokkum
7. A. Dekel
8. F. Walter

Citations in the corpus

• Herschel-ATLAS: rapid evolution of dust in galaxies over the last 5 billion years (2010, background): “…(SFR) in galaxies – although this calibration makes the assumption that young, massive stars are the main source of heating for the dust and that the majority of the UV photons from the young stars are absorbed and re-radiated by dust (Kennicutt 1998; Kennicutt et al. 2009; Calzetti et al. 2007).”
• THE CALIBRATION OF MONOCHROMATIC FAR-INFRARED STAR FORMATION RATE INDICATORS (2010, methodology): “…years based on the Spitzer MIPS 24 µm monochromatic band emission, or, equivalently, on the IRAS 25 µm emission (e.g., Calzetti et al. 2005; Wu et al. 2005; Alonso–Herrero et al. 2006; Perez–Gonzalez et al. 2006; Calzetti et al. 2007; Zhu et al. 2008; Rieke et al. 2009; Kennicutt et al. 2009).”
• GOODS-HERSCHEL MEASUREMENTS OF THE DUST ATTENUATION OF TYPICAL STAR-FORMING GALAXIES AT HIGH REDSHIFT: OBSERVATIONS OF ULTRAVIOLET-SELECTED GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2 (2011, background): “…1989; Tielens et al. 1999) and is found to correlate with the UV radiation from OB stars (e.g., Förster Schreiber et al. 2004; Roussel et al. 2001), albeit with significant scatter (e.g., Kennicutt et al. 2009; Hogg et al. 2005; Helou et al. 2001; Engelbracht et al. 2005; Normand et al. 1995).”
• THE SCALE DEPENDENCE OF THE MOLECULAR GAS DEPLETION TIME IN M33 (2010, methodology): “We account for extinction by combining Hα and infrared (24µm) emission, a powerful technique demonstrated by Calzetti et al. (2007) and Kennicutt et al. (2007, 2009).”
• AN ATLAS OF GALAXY SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS FROM THE ULTRAVIOLET TO THE MID-INFRARED (2013, methodology): “…(many of which use data that we have now incorporated into this paper), including measurements of star formation rates (e.g., Moustakas et al. 2006; Kennicutt et al. 2009), fitting or modeling the mid-infrared spectra (e.g., Smith et al. 2007b; Inami et al. 2013; Stierwalt et al. 2013) and…”
• The applicability of far-infrared fine-structure lines as star formation rate tracers over wide ranges of metallicities and galaxy types (2014, methodology): “…2008) and global scales (e.g., Calzetti et al. 2005, 2007; Wu et al. 2005; Alonso-Herrero et al. 2006; Pérez-González et al. 2006; Zhu et al. 2008; Kennicutt et al. 2009; Rieke et al. 2009; Hao et al. 2011) and directly traces the ongoing star formation over a timescale of ∼10 Myr (Calzetti et…”
• On the evolution and environmental dependence of the star formation rate versus stellar mass relation since z ∼ 2 (2013, methodology): “This equation is derived from a tight correlation between the combined Hα and total IR luminosities and the attenuation corrected SFR (see Kennicutt et al. 2009).”
• Star-formation laws in luminous infrared galaxies. New observational constraints on models (2011, methodology): “As described in Kennicutt et al. (2009), the use of total IR or monochromatic IR luminosities work both equally well to derive the total (obscured+unobscured) SFR.”
• AN ALMA SURVEY OF SUB-MILLIMETER GALAXIES IN THE EXTENDED CHANDRA DEEP FIELD SOUTH: PHYSICAL PROPERTIES DERIVED FROM ULTRAVIOLET-TO-RADIO MODELING (2015, background): “This is expected for very dusty, actively star-forming sources for which the Kennicutt (1998) conversion is best calibrated (as also discussed by e.g., Kennicutt et al. 2009; da Cunha et al. 2010a; Rowlands et al. 2014).”
• Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies (2012, methodology): “An illustration of the effectiveness of the method is shown in Figure 3, taken from Kennicutt et al. (2009).”
• ESTIMATING THE STAR FORMATION RATE AT 1 kpc SCALES IN NEARBY GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “Note that the Calzetti et al. (2010) results are partially anchored to the Kennicutt et al. (2009) results, which we consider somewhat uncertain for these targets.”
• CALIBRATING EXTINCTION-FREE STAR FORMATION RATE DIAGNOSTICS WITH 33 GHz FREE–FREE EMISSION IN NGC 6946 (2011, methodology): “…are not being captured by dust, it is interesting to point out that if we instead extinction correct the Hα line emission using the relation given by Kennicutt et al. (2009) for entire galaxies, which scales the 24µm emission by a lower value (0.020 versus 0.031 for Hii regions), we find good…”
• The lifecycle of molecular clouds in nearby star-forming disc galaxies (2019, background): “Infrared (IR) emission (e.g. at 24 µm) is also a common tracer of young star formation and can be used in particular to correct for extinction, which often heavily affects embedded young stars (e.g Kennicutt et al. 2009; Hao et al. 2011).”
• EXTENDING THE NEARBY GALAXY HERITAGE WITH WISE: FIRST RESULTS FROM THE WISE ENHANCED RESOLUTION GALAXY ATLAS (2012, methodology): “…emission (alternatively, gas column density-normalized PAH emission) or combinations of UV or Hα and infrared tracers to capture both the unobscured and obscured star formation (Calzetti et al. 2007; Leroy et al. 2008; Calzetti 2011; Kennicutt et al. 2009; Rieke et al. 2009; Treyer et al. 2010).”
• Fitting the integrated spectral energy distributions of galaxies (2010, background): “These two measures, while correlated, thus need to be properly corrected before being able to compare them (see e.g. Kennicutt 1998; Boquien et al. 2007; Kennicutt et al. 2009; Lee et al. 2009a, and references therein).”
• Modelling the spectral energy distribution of galaxies - V. The dust and PAH emission SEDs of disk galaxies (2010, neutral): “…galaxies (Haas et al. 1998, Hippelein et al. 2003, Tuffs & Gabriel 2003, Popescu et al. 2005) and is now being confirmed by the infrared data from Spitzer (PérezGonzález et al. 2006, Hinz et al. 2006, Dale et al. 2007, Bendo et al. 2008, Kennicutt et al. 2009) and AKARI (Suzuki et al. 2007).”
• COMPARISON OF Hα AND UV STAR FORMATION RATES IN THE LOCAL VOLUME: SYSTEMATIC DISCREPANCIES FOR DWARF GALAXIES (2009, result): “Kennicutt et al. (2009) reaches similar conclusions from the analysis of about 400 nearby galaxies.”
• THE PRESENT-DAY STAR FORMATION RATE OF THE MILKY WAY DETERMINED FROM SPITZER-DETECTED YOUNG STELLAR OBJECTS (2010, methodology): “…infrared flux, that can be compared to 1Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA 2Spitzer Postdoctoral Fellow 3Space Science Institute, 4750 Walnut St. Suite 205, Boulder, CO 80301, USA observations (e.g. Calzetti et al. 2007; Kennicutt et al. 2009).”