Star Formation Rates for Elliptical Galaxies Derived from the Wise 12- and 22-µm Emission

Journal Article · Thu Sep 01 00:00:00 EDT 2022 · Sains Malaysiana

DOI:https://doi.org/10.17576/jsm-2022-5109-25· OSTI ID:1983065

Mohd Ali, Nur Hidayah ^[1]; Zainal Abidin, Zamri ^[1]; Hwang, Chorng-Yuan ^[2]

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1. University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia)
2. National Central Univ., Taoyuan (Taiwan)

We investigated the star formation rates (SFRs) of selected elliptical galaxies using the infrared data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The elliptical galaxies were selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) MPA-JHU catalog and morphology classified by Galaxy Zoo catalog. We used the 3.4-µm emission (W1) of WISE to represent the stellar mass of the galaxies and the 12- and 22-µm emission (W3 and W4) of WISE to represent the star formation activity of the galaxies. The W3- and W4-based star formation rates are usually overestimated due to the star emission in low star-forming galaxies. Stellar continuum emission could contribute to MIR fluxes of elliptical galaxies with an average overestimation of ~ 13.95 and ~ 0.77% from the observed fluxes of WISE W3 and W4-bands, which determined by using the estimated WISE W3 and W4 flux correction factors. Better SFRs can be obtained by subtracting the stellar contribution of the sources. Our result highlights the possibility of the existence of unknown mechanisms triggering the continuous star formation activities in elliptical galaxies.

• Research Organization: US Department of Energy (USDOE), Washington, DC (United States). Office of Science, Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE; University of Malaya
• OSTI ID: 1983065
• Journal Information: Sains Malaysiana, Journal Name: Sains Malaysiana Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 51; ISSN 0126-6039
• Publisher: National University of Malaysia
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
IR sources
galaxies
star formation