We present the first Herschel PACS and SPIRE images of the low-metallicity galaxy NGC 6822 observed from 70 to 500 μm and clearly resolve the H ii regions with PACS and SPIRE. We find that the ratio ...250/500 is dependent on the 24 μm surface brightness in NGC 6822, which would locally link the heating processes of the coldest phases of dust in the ISM to the star formation activity. We model the SEDs of some regions H ii regions and less active regions across the galaxy and find that the SEDs of H ii regions show warmer ranges of dust temperatures. We derive very high dust masses when graphite is used in our model to describe carbon dust. Using amorphous carbon, instead, requires less dust mass to account for submm emission due to its lower emissivity properties. This indicates that SED models including Herschel constraints may require different dust properties than commonly used. The global G/D of NGC 6822 is finally estimated to be 186, using amorphous carbon.
We study the link between observed ultraviolet (UV) luminosity, stellar mass and dust attenuation within rest-frame UV-selected samples at z ∼ 4, ∼ 3 and ∼1.5. We measure by stacking at 250, 350 and ...500 μm in the Herschel/Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver images from the Herschel Multi-Tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) program the average infrared luminosity as a function of stellar mass and UV luminosity. We find that dust attenuation is mostly correlated with stellar mass. There is also a secondary dependence with UV luminosity: at a given UV luminosity, dust attenuation increases with stellar mass, while at a given stellar mass it decreases with UV luminosity. We provide new empirical recipes to correct for dust attenuation given the observed UV luminosity and the stellar mass. Our results also enable us to put new constraints on the average relation between star formation rate (SFR) and stellar mass at z ∼ 4, ∼3 and ∼1.5. The SFR-stellar mass relations are well described by power laws (
), with the amplitudes being similar at z ∼ 4 and ∼3, and decreasing by a factor of 4 at z ∼ 1.5 at a given stellar mass. We further investigate the evolution with redshift of the specific SFR. Our results are in the upper range of previous measurements, in particular at z ∼ 3, and are consistent with a plateau at 3 < z < 4. Current model predictions (either analytic, semi-analytic or hydrodynamic) are inconsistent with these values, as they yield lower predictions than the observations in the redshift range we explore. We use these results to discuss the star formation histories of galaxies in the framework of the main sequence of star-forming galaxies. Our results suggest that galaxies at high redshift (2.5 < z < 4) stay around 1 Gyr on the main sequence. With decreasing redshift, this time increases such that z = 1 main-sequence galaxies with
stay on the main sequence until z = 0.
We present Herschel-SPIRE observations at 250–500 μm of the giant elliptical galaxy M 86 and examine the distribution of the resolved cold dust emission and its relation with other galactic tracers. ...The SPIRE images reveal three dust components: emission from the central region; a dust lane extending north-south; and a bright emission feature 10 kpc to the south-east. We estimate that ~106 $M_\odot$ of dust is spatially coincident with atomic and ionized hydrogen, originating from stripped material from the nearby spiral NGC 4438 due to recent tidal interactions with M 86. The gas-to-dust ratio of the cold gas component ranges from ~20–80. We discuss the different heating mechanisms for the dust features.
We examine the infrared properties of 43 high-redshift (0.1 < z < 1.2), infrared-luminous galaxies in the Extended Groth Strip (EGS), selected by a deep 70 μm survey with the Multiband Imaging ...Photometer on Spitzer (MIPS). In addition and with reference to starburst-type spectral energy distributions (SEDs), we derive a set of equations for estimating the total infrared luminosity (LIR) in the range 8–1000 μm using photometry from at least one MIPS band. 42 out of 43 of our sources' optical/infrared SEDs (λobserved < 160 μm) are starburst type, with only one object displaying a prominent power-law near-infrared continuum. For a quantitative analysis, models of radiation transfer in dusty media are fit on to the infrared photometry, revealing that the majority of galaxies are represented by high extinction, Av > 35, and for a large fraction (∼50 per cent) the SED turns over into the Rayleigh–Jeans regime at wavelengths longward of 90 μm. For comparison, we also fit semi-empirical templates based on local galaxy data; however, these underestimate the far-infrared SED shape by a factor of at least 2 and in extreme cases up to 10 for the majority (∼70 per cent) of the sources. Further investigation of SED characteristics reveals that the mid-infrared (70/24 μm) continuum slope is decoupled from various galaxy properties such as the total infrared luminosity and far-infrared peak, quantified by the L160/L70 ratio. In view of these results, we propose that these high-redshift galaxies have different properties to their local counterparts, in the sense that large amounts of dust cause heavy obscuration and are responsible for an additional cold emissive component, appearing as a far-infrared excess in their SEDs.
The standard method of mapping the interstellar medium in a galaxy, by observing the molecular gas in the CO 1-0 line and the atomic gas in the 21-cm line, is largely limited with current telescopes ...to galaxies in the nearby universe. In this letter, we use SPIRE observations of the galaxies M 99 and M 100 to explore the alternative approach of mapping the interstellar medium using the continuum emission from the dust. We have compared the methods by measuring the relationship between the star-formation rate and the surface density of gas in the galaxies using both methods. We find the two methods give relationships with a similar dispersion, confirming that observing the continuum emission from the dust is a promising method of mapping the interstellar medium in galaxies.
We examine the rest-frame far-infrared emission from powerful radio sources with 1.4-GHz luminosity densities of 25 ≤ log(L
1.4/W Hz−1) ≤ 26.5 in the extragalactic Spitzer First Look Survey field. We ...combine Herschel/SPIRE flux densities with Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera and Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer infrared data to obtain total (
m) infrared luminosities for these radio sources. We separate our sources into a moderate, 0.4 < z < 0.9, and a high, 1.2 < z < 3.0, redshift sub-sample and we use Spitzer observations of a z < 0.1 3CRR sample as a local comparison. By comparison to numbers from the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Simulated Skies, we find that our moderate-redshift sample is complete and our high-redshift sample is 14 per cent complete. We constrain the ranges of mean star formation rates (SFRs) to be 3.4-4.2, 18-41 and 80-581 M⊙ yr−1 for the local, moderate- and high-redshift samples, respectively. Hence, we observe an increase in the mean SFR with increasing redshift which we can parametrize as ∼(1 + z)
Q
, where Q = 4.2 ± 0.8. However, we observe no trends of mean SFR with radio luminosity within the moderate- or high-redshift bins. We estimate that radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the high-redshift sample contribute 0.1-0.5 per cent to the total SFR density at that epoch. Hence, if all luminous starbursts host radio-loud AGN we infer a radio-loud phase duty cycle of 0.001-0.005.
Abstract
We present a study of the far-infrared (IR) properties of a stellar mass selected sample of 1.5 < z < 3 galaxies with log (M
*/M⊙) > 9.5 drawn from the Great Observatories Origins Deep ...Survey (GOODS) Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) Survey (GNS), the deepest H-band Hubble Space Telescope survey of its type prior to the installation of Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). We use far-IR and submm data from the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) and Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instruments on-board Herschel, taken from the PACS Evolutionary Probe (PEP) and Herschel Multi-Tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES) key projects, respectively. We find a total of 22 GNS galaxies, with median log (M
*/M⊙) = 10.8 and z = 2.0, associated with 250 μm sources detected with signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) > 3. We derive mean total IR luminosity log L
IR(L⊙) = 12.36 ± 0.05 and corresponding star formation rate (SFR)IR + UV = (280 ± 40) M⊙ yr−1 for these objects, and find them to have mean dust temperature T
dust ≈ 35 K. We find that the SFR derived from the far-IR photometry combined with ultraviolet (UV)-based estimates of unobscured SFR for these galaxies is on average more than a factor of 2 higher than the SFR derived from extinction-corrected UV emission alone, although we note that the IR-based estimate is subject to substantial Malmquist bias. To mitigate the effect of this bias and extend our study to fainter fluxes, we perform a stacking analysis to measure the mean SFR in bins of stellar mass. We obtain detections at the 2-4σ level at SPIRE wavelengths for samples with log (M
*/M⊙) > 10. In contrast to the Herschel detected GNS galaxies, we find that estimates of SFRIR + UV for the stacked samples are comparable to those derived from extinction-corrected UV emission, although the uncertainties are large. We find evidence for an increasing fraction of dust obscured star formation with stellar mass, finding , which is likely a consequence of the mass-metallicity relation.
We present Herschel SPIRE and PACS photometeric observations of the low metallicity (Z ~ 0.35 $Z_{\odot}$) nearby dwarf galaxy, NGC 1705, in six wavelength bands as part of the Dwarf Galaxy Survey ...guaranteed time Herschel key program. We confirm the presence of two dominant circumnuclear IR-bright regions surrounding the central super star cluster that had been previously noted at mid-IR wavelengths and in the sub-mm by LABOCA. On constructing a global spectral energy distribution using the SPIRE and PACS photometry, in conjunction with archival IR measurements, we note the presence of an excess at sub-mm wavelengths. This excess suggests the presence of a signiPcant cold dust component within NGC 1705 and was modeled as an additional cold component in the SED. Although alternative explanations for the sub-mm excess beyond 350 μm, such as changes to the dust emissivity cannot be ruled out, the most likely explanation for the observed submillimetre excess is that of an additional cold dust component.
We present the first active galactic nuclei (AGN) census in a sample of 61 galaxies selected at 70 μm, a wavelength which should strongly favour the detection of star-forming systems. For the purpose ...of this study, we take advantage of deep Chandra X-ray and Spitzer infrared (3.6–160 μm) data, as well as optical spectroscopy and photometry from the Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe 2 (DEEP 2) survey for the Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field, as part of the All-Wavelength Extended Groth Strip International Survey. We investigate spectral line diagnostics (O iii/Hβ and Ne iii/O ii ratios, Hδ Balmer absorption line equivalent widths and the strength of the 4000 Å break), X-ray luminosities and spectral energy distributions (SEDs). We find that the 70-μm sources are undergoing starburst (SB) episodes and are therefore characterized by a predominance of young stars. In addition, 13 per cent of the sources show AGN signatures and hence potentially host an AGN. When the sample is split into SBs (1010 < LIR < 1011 L⊙), luminous infrared Galaxies (LIRGs; 1011 < LIR < 1012 L⊙) and ultraluminous infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs; 1012 < LIR < 1013 L⊙), the AGN fraction becomes 0, 11 and 23 per cent, respectively, showing an increase with total infrared luminosity. However, by examining the sources' panchromatic SEDs, we conclude that although the AGN is energetically important in 1 out of 61 objects all 70-μm-selected galaxies are primarily powered by star formation. When compared to a sample of DEEP 2 galaxies in the same redshift range and with similar optical colours, we find that the 70-μm population is characterized by younger stellar ages and a higher AGN incidence, indicating that strongly star-forming populations might be a key in studying the relationship between black hole and stellar growth.
We present Herschel-SPIRE observations of the perturbed galaxy NGC 4438 in the Virgo cluster. These images reveal the presence of extra-planar dust up to ~4–5 kpc away from the galaxy's disk. The ...dust closely follows the distribution of the stripped atomic and molecular hydrogen, supporting the idea that gas and dust are perturbed in a similar fashion by the cluster environment. Interestingly, the extra-planar dust lacks a warm temperature component when compared to the material still present in the disk, explaining why it was missed by previous far-infrared investigations. Our study provides evidence for dust stripping in clusters of galaxies and illustrates the potential of Herschel data for our understanding of environmental effects on galaxy evolution.
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