2017/09/01 by M. J. I. Brown, Michael J. I. Brown, John Moustakas +19
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Calibration #Environmental science #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Geography #Infrared #Optics #Physics #Remote sensing #Star (game theory) #Star formation #Stars #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #Ultraviolet #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa8ad2
Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal; 39 pages, 14 figures and 4 tables
arxiv created 2017/09/01 · openalex publication_date 2017/10/01 · arxiv updated 2017/10/11 · openalex created_date 2020/11/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract We present calibrations for star formation rate (SFR) indicators in the ultraviolet, mid-infrared, and radio-continuum bands, including one of the first direct calibrations of 150 MHz as an SFR indicator. Our calibrations utilize 66 nearby star-forming galaxies with Balmer-decrement-corrected luminosities, which span five orders of magnitude in SFR and have absolute magnitudes of . Most of our photometry and spectrophotometry are measured from the same region of each galaxy, and our spectrophotometry has been validated with SDSS photometry, so our random and systematic errors are small relative to the intrinsic scatter seen in SFR indicator calibrations. We find that the Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer W 4 (22.8 μ m), Spitzer 24 μ m, and 1.4 GHz bands have tight correlations with the Balmer-decrement-corrected H α luminosity, with a scatter of only 0.2 dex. Our calibrations are comparable to those from the prior literature for L ∗ galaxies, but for dwarf galaxies, our calibrations can give SFRs that are far greater than those derived from most previous literature.