Anomalously low PAH emission from low-luminosity galaxies

dc.creatorHogg, David W.
dc.creatorTremonti, Christy A.
dc.creatorBlanton, Michael R.
dc.creatorFinkbeiner, Douglas P.
dc.creatorPadmanabhan, Nikhil
dc.creatorQuintero, Alejandro D.
dc.creatorSchlegel, David J.
dc.creatorWherry, Nicholas
dc.date2004-08-23
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T06:30:00Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T06:30:00Z
dc.descriptionThe Spitzer Space Telescope First Look Survey Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) near and mid-infrared imaging data partially overlaps the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), with 313 visually selected (r<17.6 mag) SDSS Main Sample galaxies in the overlap region. The 3.5 and 7.8 um properties of the galaxies are investigated in the context of their visual properties, where the IRAC [3.5] magnitude primarily measures starlight, and the [7.8] magnitude primarily measures PAH emission from the interstellar medium. As expected, we find a strong inverse correlation between [3.5]-[7.8] and visual color; galaxies red in visual colors (`red galaxies') tend to show very little dust and molecular emission (low `PAH-to-star' ratios), and galaxies blue in visual colors (`blue galaxies,' ie, star-forming galaxies) tend to show large PAH-to-star ratios. Red galaxies with high PAH-to-star ratios tend to be edge-on disks reddened by dust lanes. Simple, visually inferred attenuation corrections bring the visual colors of these galaxies in line with those of face-on disks; ie, PAH emission is closely related to attenuation-corrected, optically inferred star-formation rates. Blue galaxies with anomalously low PAH-to-star ratios are all low-luminosity star-forming galaxies. There is some weak evidence in this sample that the deficiency in PAH emission for these low-luminosity galaxies may be related to emission-line metallicity.
dc.descriptionsubmitted to ApJ. Because of some obscure arXiv bug, the RGB figure may appear correctly only in the PDF version
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408420
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0408420
dc.identifierAstrophys.J. 624 (2005) 162-167
dc.identifierdoi:10.1086/429686
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/98237
dc.subjectAstrophysics
dc.titleAnomalously low PAH emission from low-luminosity galaxies
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