Herschel-ATLAS: The Surprising Diversity of Dust-Selected Galaxies in the Local Submillimetre Universe

TL;DR

This study analyzes a sample of nearby dust-rich galaxies from Herschel-ATLAS, revealing their diverse properties, colder dust temperatures, and the counter-intuitive relationship between dust content and UV attenuation, offering insights into early galaxy evolution.

Contribution

First detailed analysis of a 250 μm blind sample of local galaxies, highlighting their dust properties and diversity, with implications for galaxy evolution models.

Findings

Median dust temperature is 14.6 K, colder than previous surveys.

Dust-rich galaxies have lower UV attenuation despite higher dust content.

Over 35% of dust mass is in very blue, irregular, actively star-forming galaxies.

Abstract

We present the properties of the first 250 $\mu$m blind sample of nearby galaxies (15 < D < 46 Mpc) containing 42 objects from the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS). Herschel's sensitivity probes the faint end of the dust luminosity function for the first time, spanning a range of stellar mass (7.4 < log$_{10}$ M$_{\star}$ < 11.3 M$_{\odot}$), star formation activity (-11.8 < log$_{10}$ SSFR < -8.9 yr$^{-1}$), gas fraction (3-96 per cent), and colour (0.6 < FUV-Ks < 7.0 mag). The median cold dust temperature is 14.6 K, colder than in the Herschel Reference Survey (18.5 K) and Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalogue 17.7 K. The mean dust-to-stellar mass ratio in our sample is higher than these surveys by factors of 3.7 and 1.8, with a dust mass volume density of (3.7 $\pm$ 0.7) x 10$^{5}$ M$_{\odot}$ Mpc$^{-3}$. Counter-intuitively, we find that the more dust rich a galaxy, the lower its UV attenuation. Over half of our dust-selected sample are very blue in FUV-Ks colour, with irregular and/or highly flocculent morphology, these galaxies account for only 6 per cent of the sample's stellar mass but contain over 35 per cent of the dust mass. They are the most actively star forming galaxies in the sample, with the highest gas fractions and lowest UV attenuation. They also appear to be in an early stage of converting their gas into stars, providing valuable insights into the chemical evolution of young galaxies.