2008/05/31 by Jo Bovy, David W. Hogg, John Moustakas
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Electrical and Electromagnetic Research #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/592187
published as Astrophys.J. 688 (2008) 198-207 · 9 pages, 6 figures. ApJ in press
arxiv created 2008/07/25 · openalex publication_date 2008/11/07 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
If galaxy clusters contain intracluster dust, the spectra of galaxies lying behind clusters should show attenuation by dust absorption. We compare the optical (3500-7200 Å) spectra of 60,267 luminous, early-type galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to search for the signatures of intracluster dust in z ∼ 0.05 clusters. We select massive, quiescent (i.e., non-star-forming) galaxies using an EW (H α) ⩽ 2 Å cut and consider galaxies in three bins of velocity dispersion ranging from 150 to 300 km s −1 . The uniformity of early-type galaxy spectra in the optical allows us to construct inverse-variance-weighted composite spectra with high signal-to-noise ratios (ranging from 10 2 to 10 3 ). We compare the composite spectra of galaxies that lie behind and adjacent to galaxy clusters and find no convincing evidence of dust attenuation on scales of ~0.15-2 Mpc; we derive a generic limit of E ( B − V ) < 3 × 10 −3 mag on scales of ~1-2 Mpc at the 99% confidence level, using conservative jackknife error bars, corresponding to a dust mass ≲10 8 M ☉ . On scales smaller than 1 Mpc, this limit is slightly weaker, E ( B − V ) < 8 × 10 −3 mag.