2013/03/01 by Stacy McGaugh, McGaugh, Stacy, Jim Schombert +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.CO
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1303.0320
This paper has been withdrawn because we Identified systematic errors in the published optical photometry of the THINGS subsample of galaxies. A version with corrected data will appear in future
openalex publication_date 2013/03/01 · arxiv created 2014/02/19 · arxiv updated 2014/02/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present new Spitzer 3.6 micron observations of a sample of disk galaxies spanning over 10 magnitudes in luminosity and ranging in gas fraction from ~10% to over 90%. We use these data to test population synthesis prescriptions for computing stellar mass. Many commonly employed models fail to provide self-consistent stellar masses in the sense that the stellar mass estimated from the optical luminosity typically exceeds that estimated from the near-infrared (NIR) luminosity. This problem is present in models both with and without TP-AGB stars, but is more severe in the former. Self-consistency can be achieved if NIR mass-to-light ratios are approximately constant with a mean value near 0.5 Msun/Lsun at 3.6 microns. We use the Baryonic Tully-Fisher relation calibrated by gas rich galaxies to provide an independent estimate of the color-mass to light ratio relation. This approach also suggests that the typical 3.6 micron mass-to-light ratio is 0.5 (0.65 in the K band) for rotationally supported galaxies. These values are consistent with a Kroupa IMF.