Intrinsic dust and star-formation scaling relations in nearby galaxies

TL;DR

This study analyzes nearby galaxies to derive intrinsic dust and star-formation scaling relations, correcting for observational biases, and compares these to existing literature to understand galaxy structure and evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed correction method for dust and projection effects in galaxy parameter measurements, providing more accurate intrinsic scaling relations.

Findings

Intrinsic dust and star-formation relations are consistent with literature.

Dust properties like opacity and dust-to-gas ratios are reliably measured.

Biases from dust and projection effects significantly affect observed galaxy parameters.

Abstract

Following from our recent work, we present results of a detailed analysis of a representative sample of nearby galaxies. The photometric parameters of the morphological components are obtained from bulge-disk decompositions, using GALFIT software. The previously obtained method and library of numerical corrections for dust, decomposition and projection effects, are used to correct the measured (observed) parameters to intrinsic values. Observed and intrinsic galaxy dust and star-formation related scaling relations are presented, to emphasize the scale of the biases introduced by these effects. To understand the extent to which star-formation is distributed in the young stellar disks of galaxies, star-formation connected relations which rely on measurements of scale-lengths and fluxes / luminosities of H$\alpha$ images, are shown. The mean dust opacity, dust-to-stellar mass and dust-to-gas ratios of the sample, together with the main characteristics of the intrinsic relations are found to be consistent with values found in the literature.