Issue |
A&A
Volume 432, Number 2, March III 2005
|
|
---|---|---|
Page(s) | 423 - 429 | |
Section | Extragalactic astronomy | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361:20042189 | |
Published online | 02 March 2005 |
Mid-infrared luminosity as an indicator of the total infrared luminosity of galaxies *
Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, Traverse du Siphon, BP8, 13376 Marseille Cedex 12, France e-mail: [tsutomu.takeuchi;veronique.buat;jorge.iglesias;alessandro.boselli; denis.brugarella]@oamp.fr
Received:
15
October
2004
Accepted:
2
November
2004
The infrared (IR) emission plays a crucial role in
understanding the star formation in galaxies hidden by dust.
We first examined four estimators of the IR luminosity of galaxies,
LFIR [CITE],
LTIR [CITE],
revised version of LTIR [CITE] (we denote LTIR2),
and LIR [CITE] by using the observed SEDs of well-known
galaxies.
We found that LIR provides excellent estimates of the total IR luminosity
for a variety of galaxy SEDs.
The performance of LTIR2 was also found to be very good.
Using LIR, we then statistically analyzed the IRAS PSCz galaxy
sample [CITE] and found useful formulae relating the MIR
monochromatic luminosities [ and
]
and LIR.
For this purpose we constructed a subsample of 1420 galaxies with all
four IRAS band (12, 25, 60, and
m) flux densities.
We found linear relations between LIR and MIR luminosities,
and
.
The prediction error with a 95% confidence level is a factor of 4–5.
Hence, these formulae are useful for the estimation of the total
IR luminosity only from
m or
m observations.
We further tried to make an “interpolation” formula for galaxies at
.
For this purpose we construct the formula of the relation between 15-μm
luminosity and the total IR luminosity.
We conclude that the 15-μm formula can be used as an estimator of the
total IR luminosity from
m observation of galaxies at
.
Key words: dust, extinction / galaxies: statistics / infrared: galaxies / methods: statistical
© ESO, 2005
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