2008-08-06

ultraviolet-faint star-forming galaxies

Today, Wu found a population of galaxies that are clearly forming stars (significant H-alpha emission, star-formation line ratio diagnostics), not strongly extincted in the optical (H-alpha to H-beta ratio near 3), but with very little GALEX NUV flux. There is pretty-much no way to make such galaxies, so we suspect that we have issues with either the SDSS data or the GALEX data or their intercomparison (for example, overlapping sources, or star-formation offset from the nucleus, etc.). But I am now confident that we will either be able to refine our procedures so that we can use GALEX to find post-starburst galaxies, or else we will discover a new and interesting galaxy sub-population. Either way, I am happy.

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