Mapping the interstellar medium in galaxies with Herschel/SPIRE
Abstract
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 M99 and M100 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. 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.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1005.2113,
title = {Mapping the interstellar medium in galaxies with Herschel/SPIRE},
author = {S. A. Eales and M. W. L. Smith and C. D. Wilson and G. J. Bendo and L. Cortese and M. Pohlen and A. Boselli and H. L. Gomez and R. Auld and M. Baes and M. J. Barlow and J. J. Bock and M. Bradford and V. Buat and N. Castro-Rodriguez and P. Chanial and S. Charlot and L. Ciesla and D. L. Clements and A. Cooray and D. Cormier and J. I. Davies and E. Dwek and D. Elbaz and M. Galametz and F. Galliano and W. K. Gear and J. Glenn and M. Griffin and S. Hony and K. G. Isaak and L. R. Levenson and N. Lu and S. Madden and B. O'Halloran and K. Okumura and S. Oliver and M. J. Page and P. Panuzzo and A. Papageorgiou and T. J. Parkin and I. Perez-Fournon and N. Rangwala and E. E. Rigby and H. Roussel and A. Rykala and N. Sacchi and M. Sauvage and B. Schulz and M. R. P. Schirm and L. Spinoglio and S. Srinivasan and J. A. Stevens and M. Symeonidis and M. Trichas and M. Vaccari and L. Vigroux and H. Wozniak and G. S. Wright and W. W. Zeilinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1005.2113},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
Astronomy and Astrophysics in press