Revisiting the Local Star-Forming Galaxies Observed in the HETDEX Pilot Survey
Jong-Ho Shinn

TL;DR
This study reanalyzed local star-forming galaxies from the HETDEX Pilot Survey, improving metallicity estimates, revealing overestimated star-formation rates in previous work, and emphasizing the importance of convergence monitoring in MCMC analyses.
Contribution
It introduces a careful Bayesian reanalysis of HETDEX data, highlighting the impact of convergence and calibration uncertainties on galaxy property estimates.
Findings
New metallicity estimates are higher by ~2-sigma than previous values.
Star-formation rates were overestimated by up to a factor of five.
Proper convergence monitoring is crucial for reliable MCMC results.
Abstract
I have reanalyzed the data obtained for local () star-forming galaxies during the pilot survey for the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX)---called the HETDEX Pilot Survey (HPS)---which uses an integral-field-unit spectrograph and covers at resolution. I have newly determined the gas metallicities, , following the Bayesian analysis scheme of the previous study, but dealing carefully with the uncertainty of strong-line calibration, performing reproducibility tests with mock data, and monitoring the convergence of the Markov-Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling. From the mock-data tests, I found that the nebular emission-line color excess can be overestimated by as much as 2- or more, although the metallicity can recover the input value to within 1-. The new…
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