Submillimetre Photometry of 323 Nearby Galaxies from the Herschel Reference Survey

TL;DR

This paper presents submillimetre flux measurements for 323 nearby galaxies from the Herschel Reference Survey, providing a comprehensive dataset to study dust properties in the local universe.

Contribution

It offers the first uniform submillimetre photometry for a large, diverse sample of nearby galaxies, serving as a benchmark for dust studies and cosmological surveys.

Findings

Flux densities are consistent with previous surveys like HeViCS, KINGFISH, and Planck.

The dataset covers a wide range of galaxy types and environments.

Provides a reliable reference for dust properties at zero redshift.

Abstract

The Herschel Reference Survey (HRS) is a guaranteed time Herschel key project aimed at studying the physical properties of the interstellar medium in galaxies of the nearby universe. This volume limited, K-band selected sample is composed of galaxies spanning the whole range of morphological types (from ellipticals to late-type spirals) and environments (from the field to the centre of the Virgo Cluster). We present flux density measurements of the whole sample of 323 galaxies of the HRS in the three bands of the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE), at 250, 350 and 500 microns. Aperture photometry is performed on extended galaxies and point spread function (PSF) fitting on timeline data for unresolved objects; we carefully estimate errors and upper limits. The flux densities are found to be in good agreement with those of the HeViCS and KINGFISH key projects in all SPIRE bands, and of the Planck consortium at 350 and 550 microns, for the galaxies in common. This submillimetre catalogue of nearby galaxies is a benchmark for the study of the dust properties in the local universe, giving the zero redshift reference for any cosmological survey.