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Published December 2007 | Published
Journal Article Open

Extinction-corrected Star Formation Rates Empirically Derived from Ultraviolet-Optical Colors

Abstract

Using a sample of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectroscopic catalog with measured star formation rates (SFRs) and ultraviolet (UV) photometry from the GALEX Medium Imaging Survey, we derived empirical linear correlations between the SFR to UV luminosity ratio and the UV–optical colors of blue-sequence galaxies. The relations provide a simple prescription to correct UV data for dust attenuation that best reconciles the SFRs derived from UV and emission-line data. The method breaks down for the red-sequence population as well as for very blue galaxies such as the local "supercompact" UV luminous galaxies and the majority of high-redshift Lyman break galaxies, which form a low-attenuation sequence of their own.

Additional Information

© 2007 American Astronomical Society. Print publication: Issue 2 (2007 December); received 2007 April 24; accepted for publication 2007 July 19. The authors thank their anonymous referee, whose many comments greatly improved this paper. GALEX is a NASA Small Explorer, launched in 2003 April. We gratefully acknowledge NASA's support for its construction, operation, and science analysis, as well as the cooperation of the French Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales and the Korean Ministry of Science and Technology.

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August 22, 2023
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October 19, 2023