2006/05/18 by B. D. Johnson, Bradley D. Johnson, D. Schiminovich +37 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Infrared #James Webb Space Telescope #Luminous infrared galaxy #Physics #Sky #Spitzer Space Telescope #Star formation #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Telescope #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/505741
published as Astrophys.J.644:L109-L112,2006 · 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted by ApJ Letters
arxiv created 2006/05/18 · openalex publication_date 2006/06/08 · arxiv updated 2014/10/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We combine data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Galaxy Evolution Explorer ( GALEX ), and the Spitzer Space Telescope to create a sample of galaxies observed homogeneously from the UV to the far-IR. This sample, consisting of ~460 galaxies observed spectroscopically by the SDSS, provides us with a multiwavelength (0.15-24 μm) view of obscured and unobscured star formation in nearby ( z < 0.3) galaxies with star formation rates (SFRs) ranging from 0.01 to 100 M ☉ yr -1 . We calculate a robust dust measure from the infrared-to-UV ratio (or infrared excess [IRX]) and explore the influence of star formation history (SFH) on the dust-UV color relation (i.e., the IRX-β relation). We find that the UV colors of galaxies are only weakly dependent on their SFH as measured by the 4000 Å break. However, we find that the contributions of dust and SFH are distinguishable when colors at widely separated wavelengths (e.g., 0.23-3.6 μm) are introduced. We show this explicitly by recasting the IRX-β relation as a more general IRX-SFH-color relation, which we examine in different projections. We also determine simple fits to this relation.