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.

Astronomy and Astrophysics in press

References in corpus (10)

• Herschel Space Observatory - An ESA facility for far-infrared and submillimetre astronomy
• The Herschel-SPIRE instrument and its in-flight performance
• The Resolved Properties of Extragalactic Giant Molecular Clouds
• The Herschel Reference Survey
• In-flight calibration of the Herschel-SPIRE instrument
• The Herschel Space Observatory view of dust in M81
• The JCMT Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey I. Star Forming Molecular Gas in Virgo Cluster Spiral Galaxies
• Radial distribution of gas and dust in the two spiral galaxies M99 and M100
• First results from HerMES on the evolution of the submillimetre luminosity function
• Molecular line intensities as measures of cloud masses - II. Conversion factors for specific galaxy types

Cited by in corpus (30)

• Star Formation in the Milky Way and Nearby Galaxies
• The evolution of the dust and gas content in galaxies
• Herschel-ATLAS: Rapid evolution of dust in galaxies in the last 5 billion years
• Cold gas properties of the Herschel Reference Survey. I. 12CO(1-0) and HI data
• MIPS 24-160 micron photometry for the Herschel-SPIRE Local Galaxies Guaranteed Time Programs
• The JCMT Nearby Galaxies Legacy Survey VIII. CO data and the L(CO3-2)-L(FIR) correlation in the SINGS sample
• The Herschel Virgo Cluster Survey. IX. Dust-to-gas mass ratio and metallicity gradients in four Virgo spiral galaxies
• Estimating gas masses and dust-to-gas ratios from optical spectroscopy
• The resolved star-formation relation in nearby active galactic nuclei
• Black hole accretion preferentially occurs in gas rich galaxies
• The ALMA-ALPAKA survey I: high-resolution CO and [CI] kinematics of star-forming galaxies at z = 0.5-3.5
• An Empirical Determination of the Dust Mass Absorption Coefficient, ${\kappa }_d$, Using the Herschel Reference Survey
• The First Maps of ${\kappa }_d$ -- the Dust Mass Absorption Coefficient -- in Nearby Galaxies, with DustPedia
• The selective effect of environment on the atomic and molecular gas-to-dust ratio of nearby galaxies in the Herschel Reference Survey
• Herschel/SPIRE Observations of the Dusty Disk of NGC 4244
• Towards understanding the relation between the gas and the attenuation in galaxies at kpc scales
• The Quest for the Missing Dust: II -- Two Orders of Magnitude of Evolution in the Dust-to-Gas Ratio Resolved Within Local Group Galaxies
• Close-up view of a luminous star-forming galaxy at z=2.95
• The role of turbulence in star formation laws and thresholds
• Towards a census of high-redshift dusty galaxies with $Herschel$: A selection of "500 $\mu$m-risers"
• A new empirical method to estimate the molecular gas mass in galaxies
• Infrared luminosity functions and dust mass functions in the EAGLE simulation
• Star Formation & Dust Heating in the FIR Bright Sources of M83
• Herschel and JCMT observations of the early-type dwarf galaxy NGC 205
• Stacked Average Far-Infrared Spectrum of Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies from the Herschel/SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer
• Cold dust but warm gas in the unusual elliptical galaxy NGC 4125
• Continuum Observations of M51 and M83 at 1.1 mm with AzTEC
• The Infrared Properties of Sources Matched in the WISE all-sky and Herschel-ATLAS Surveys
• AGN in Dusty Starbursts at Z=2: Feedback Still To Kick In
• The Opacity of Spiral Galaxy Disks IX; Dust and Gas Surface Densities