A Fresh Look at SEDs of Luminous Infrared Galaxies Using NED
Abstract
Spectral Energy Distributions (SEDs) provide a vital tool in astronomical research. They are widely used to study the overall energy output of astronomical objects, and thus play a critical role in classifying objects in a hierarchy of levels ranging from basic star/galaxy discrimination to characterizing subclasses of stars, galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN). For studies of galaxies, SEDs are instrumental in understanding and modeling the underlying astrophysical processes responsible for the radiation emitted in each spectral region, including the mixture of various stellar populations, emission from AGN, outflows, regions of the ISM strongly affected by large-scale shocks, and the role of dust in absorption and re-emission of radiation. We present visualizations and initial results from an overview of photometry available for a sample of luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies based on measurements combined from major sky surveys including AllWISE, 2MASS, SDSS and GALEX, as well as important data spanning from radio to X-rays gathered from thousands of journal articles and fused within the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED). The visualizations provide new insights into the current availability of data as a function of spectral region and resolution, and they concisely illustrate the wide variation of starburst and AGN emission observed even within this relatively small subset of the total galaxy population. This study will also lead to advances in how photometry and SEDs can be explored using NED. This work is made possible by NED, which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #235
- Pub Date:
- January 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AAS...23545505M