The code FADO is the first publicly available population spectral synthesis tool that treats the contribution from ionised gas to the observed emission self-consistently. We study the impact of the nebular contribution on the determination of the star formation rate (SFR), stellar mass, and consequent effect on the star-forming main sequence (SFMS) at low redshift. We applied FADO to the spectral database of the SDSS to derive the physical properties of galaxies. As a comparison, we used the data in the MPA-JHU catalogue, which contains the properties of SDSS galaxies derived without the nebular contribution. We selected a sample of SF galaxies with H$α$ and H$β$ flux measurements, and we corrected the fluxes for the nebular extinction through the Balmer decrement. We then calculated the H$α$ luminosity to estimate the SFR. Then, by combining the stellar mass and SFR estimates from FADO and MPA-JHU, the SFMS was obtained. The H$α$ flux estimates are similar between FADO and MPA-JHU. Because the H$α$ flux was used as tracer of the SFR, FADO and MPA-JHU agree in their SFR. The stellar mass estimates are slightly higher for FADO than for MPA-JHU on average. However, considering the uncertainties, the differences are negligible. With similar SFR and stellar mass estimates, the derived SFMS is also similar between FADO and MPA-JHU. Our results show that for SDSS normal SF galaxies, the additional modelling of the nebular contribution does not affect the retrieved fluxes and consequentially also does not influence SFR estimators based on the extinction-corrected H$α$ luminosity. For the stellar masses, the results point to the same conclusion. These results are a consequence of the fact that the vast majority of normal SF galaxies in the SDSS have a low nebular contribution.
As a science verification study of the newly released AKARI/FIS Faint Source Catalog ver.1, this paper discusses the different levels of dust attenuation toward stellar light and nebular emission lines within local star-forming galaxies at 0.02<z<0.10. By constructing an updated version of the AKARI-SDSS-GALEX matched galaxy catalog (with >2,000 sources), we compare the dust attenuation levels toward stellar light (from L(IR)/L(UV) ratio) and nebular emission lines (from H-alpha/H-beta ratio). We find that there is a clear trend that more massive galaxies tend to have higher "extra" attenuatio…
The origin of nebular HeII emission, which is frequently observed in low-metallicity (O/H) star-forming galaxies, remains largely an unsolved question. Using the observed anticorrelation of the integrated X-ray luminosity per unit of star formation rate ($L_X/{\rm SFR}$) of an X-ray binary population with metallicity and other empirical data from the well-studied galaxy I Zw 18, we show that the observed HeII 4686 intensity and its trend with metallicity is naturally reproduced if the bulk of He$^+$ ionizing photons are emitted by the X-ray sources. We also show that a combination of X-ray bin…
We use a sample of $78,340$ star-forming galaxies at $z\simeq 0.04-0.1$ from the SDSS DR8 survey to calculate the average nebular dust attenuation curve and its variation with the physical properties of galaxies. Using the first four low-order Balmer emission lines (H$α$, H$β$, H$γ$, H$δ$) detected in the composite spectrum of all galaxies in the sample, we derive a nebular attenuation curve in the range of $0.41\,μ$m to $0.66\,μ$m that has a similar shape and normalization to that of the Galactic extinction curve (Milky Way curve), the SMC curve and the nebular attenuation curve derived recen…
We present results of a multi-band Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) and nebular emission line analysis of a sample of 1147 spectroscopically identified dusty star-forming galaxies at 0.49 < z < 2.24 from Herschel/SPIRE and HST/WFC3 grism observations in the five CANDELS fields: AEGIS, GOODS-N, GOODS-S, COSMOS, and UDS. We use the spectroscopic redshifts measured from nebular lines to construct the SEDs of galaxies from the optical to the infrared using HST and Herschel photometry. We further utilize the 3D-HST grism Ha line flux measurements to measure the nebular star-formation rates after …
Comparing the Nebular and Stellar Dust Attenuation Curves in Nearby Star-Forming Galaxies
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)（韩国天文与空间科学研究院）；Department of Earth Science Education, Kyungpook National University（庆北国立大学地球科学教育系）；Department of Astronomy and Space Science, Chungnam National University（忠南国立大学天文学与空间科学系）；Astronomy Program, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Seoul National University（首尔国立大学物理天文学系天文学项目）；SNU Astronomy Research Center, Seoul National University（首尔国立大学天文研究中心）；Institute for Data Innovation in Science, Seoul National University（首尔国立大学数据创新科学研究院）
The Importance of Nebular Continuum and Line Emission in Observations of Young Massive Star Clusters
在这个光谱学研究的婴儿大质量星团，我们发现，连续发射的电离气体竞争对手的恒星光度在光学波长。此外，我们发现星云线发射在许多常用的宽带HST滤波器，包括F814 W I波段，F555 W V波段和F435 W B波段是显着的。NGC 4449中的两个年轻的大质量星团（YMC）是在Reines等人（2008 a）在对银河系中的射电探测到的星团进行光度学研究时发现F814 W I波段过剩后进行光谱观测的目标。光谱是用3.5米APO望远镜上的双成像光谱仪获得的。我们补充这些数据与HST和SDSS测光。通过比较我们的数据Starburst 99和GALEV模型，我们发现，在我们的观测中，星云的连续辐射与恒星光的竞争，并在U-和I-波段的相对贡献是最大的，那里的Balmer和Paschen跳跃的位置。光谱还表现出强的线发射，包括HST F814 W I带中的[SIII] 9069，9532线。我们发现，星云连续谱和线发射的结合可以解释Reines等人（2008 a）发现的F814 W I波段过剩。在努力提供一个基准，估计电离气体排放的影响测光观测的YMC，我们计算的恒星连续，星云连续，和发射线的总通量的3百万岁的集群通过各种HST过滤器/仪器组合，包括过滤器在WFC 3的相对贡献。在比较YMC的观测与演化合成模型时，我们敦促谨慎，因为星云发射可能对年轻（<500万年）星团的大小和颜色产生很大影…
Nebular continuum in high-redshift galaxies with JWST
Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade de Lisboa - OAL（空间科学与天体物理研究所，里斯本大学）；Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa（里斯本大学理学院物理系）；Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço, Universidade do Porto – CAUP（波尔图大学空间科学与天体物理研究所）
There is a long history of using optical emission and absorption lines to constrain the metallicity and ionization parameters of gas in galaxies. However, comparable diagnostics are less well-developed for the UV. Here, we assess the diagnostic potential of both absorption and emission features in the UV and evaluate the diagnostics against observations of local and high redshift galaxies. We use the CloudyFSPS nebular emission model of Byler et al. 2017, extended to include emission predictions in the UV, to evaluate the metallicity sensitivity of established UV stellar absorption indices, an…
Strong nebular emission lines are an important diagnostic tool for tracing the evolution of star-forming galaxies across cosmic time. However, different observational setups can affect these lines, and the derivation of the physical nebular properties. We analyze 12 local star-forming galaxies from the COS Legacy Spectroscopy SurveY (CLASSY) to assess the impact of using different aperture combinations on the determination of the physical conditions and gas-phase metallicity. We compare optical spectra observed with the SDSS aperture, which has a 3" of diameter similar to COS, to IFU and longs…
The AURORA Survey: Multiple Balmer and Paschen Emission Lines for Individual Star-forming Galaxies at z=1.5-4.4. II. Implications for Nebular Dust Corrections, Nebular SFRs, and Differential Reddening
University of California, Riverside（加州大学河滨分校）；University of California, Los Angeles（加州大学洛杉矶分校）；University of California, Davis（加州大学戴维斯分校）；University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学）；Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik（马克斯·普朗克地外物理学研究所）；California Institute of Technology（加州理工学院）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）
The JWST/AURORA Survey: Multiple Balmer and Paschen Emission Lines for Individual Star-forming Galaxies at z=1.5-4.4. I. A Diversity of Nebular Attenuation Curves and Evidence for Non-Unity Dust Covering Fractions
University of California, Riverside（加州大学河滨分校）；University of California, Los Angeles（加州大学洛杉矶分校）；University of Kentucky（肯塔基大学）；University of Arizona（亚利桑那大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)（宇宙黎明中心）；University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学）；Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE)（马克斯·普朗克地外物理研究所）
A hot, nebular-dominated galaxy interacting with a pristine PopIII system uncovered by JWST
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)（宇宙黎明中心）；Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；DTU Space, Technical University of Denmark（丹麦技术大学空间科学中心）
Cloudy with a chance of starshine: Possible photometric signatures of nebular-dominated emission in $1.5 < z < 8.5$ JADES galaxies
University of Oxford（牛津大学）；University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）；Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学卡弗里宇宙物理学研究所）；Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester（曼彻斯特大学乔德雷尔银行天体物理学中心）；Scuola Normale Superiore（比萨高等师范学院）
We use new HST images of nine Green Pea Galaxies (GPGs) to study their resolved structure and color. The choice of filters, F555W and F850LP, together with the redshift of the galaxies ($z\sim 0.25$), minimizes the contribution of the nebular [O\thinspace{\sc iii}] and H$α$ emission lines to the broad-band images. While these galaxies are typically very blue in color, our analysis reveals that it is only the dominant stellar clusters that are blue. Each GPG does clearly show the presence of at least one bright and compact star-forming region, but these are invariably superimposed on a more ext…
A Galaxy with an Extremely Blue UV Slope $β=-3$ at $z=9.25$ Identified by JWST Spectroscopy: Evidence for a Weak Nebular Continuum and Efficient Ionizing Photon Escape?
Spectral population synthesis (PS) is a fundamental tool in extragalactic research that aims to decipher the assembly history of galaxies from their SED. However, until recently all PS codes were restricted to purely stellar fits, neglecting the essential contribution of nebular emission (NE). With the advent of FADO, the now possible self-consistent modelling of stellar and NE opens new routes to the exploration of galaxy SFHs. The main goal of this study is to quantitatively explore the accuracy to which FADO can recover physical and evolutionary properties of galaxies and compare its output…
Spectral synthesis is a powerful tool for interpreting the physical properties of galaxies by decomposing their spectral energy distributions into the main luminosity contributors (e.g. stellar populations or ionised gas). However, the impact nebular emission has on the inferred properties of star-forming (SF) galaxies has been largely overlooked over the years. The objective of this work is to estimate the relations between stellar properties of SF galaxies from SDSS DR7 by simultaneously fitting the stellar and nebular continua with FADO and comparing them to the results derived using STARLI…
The Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) includes a novel micro shutter array (MSA) to perform multi object spectroscopy. While the MSA is mainly targeting galaxies across a larger field, it can also be used for studying star formation in crowded fields. Crowded star formation regions typically feature strong nebular emission, both in emission lines and continuum. In this work, nebular emission is referred to as nebular contamination. Nebular contamination can obscure the light from the stars, making it more challenging to obtain high quality spectra. T…
21 Balmer Jump Street: The Nebular Continuum at High Redshift and Implications for the Bright Galaxy Problem, UV Continuum Slopes, and Early Stellar Populations
We investigate the impact of the diffuse ionized gas (DIG) on abundance determinations in star-forming (SF) galaxies. The DIG is characterised using the H$α$ equivalent width ($W_{\text{H}α}$). From a set of 1,409 SF galaxies from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey, we calculate the fractional contribution of the DIG to several emission lines using high-$S/N$ data from SF spaxels (instead of using noisy emission-lines in DIG-dominated spaxels). Our method is applicable to spectra with observed $W_{\text{H}α} \gtrsim 10$ angstroms (which are not dominated by DIG emission). Since …
Diagnosing the physical and chemical conditions within star-forming galaxies (SFGs) is of paramount importance to understanding key components of galaxy formation and evolution: star-formation, gas enrichment, outflows, and accretion. Well established optical emission-line diagnostics used to discern such properties (i.e., metal content, density, strength/shape of ionizing radiation) will be observationally inaccessible for the earliest galaxies, emphasizing the need for robust, reliable interstellar medium (ISM) diagnostics at ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths. Calibrating these UV diagnostics req…
Photoionization modeling of active galactic nuclei (AGN) predicts that diffuse continuum (DC) emission from the broad-line region makes a substantial contribution to the total continuum emission from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths. Evidence for this DC component is present in the strong Balmer jump feature in AGN spectra, and possibly from reverberation measurements that find longer lags than expected from disk emission alone. However, the Balmer jump region contains numerous blended emission features, making it difficult to isolate the DC emission strength. In contrast, the Pas…
We use a sample of 532 star-forming galaxies at redshifts $z\sim 1.4-2.6$ with deep rest-frame optical spectra from the MOSFIRE Deep Evolution Field (MOSDEF) survey to place the first constraints on the nebular attenuation curve at high redshift. Based on the first five low-order Balmer emission lines detected in the composite spectra of these galaxies (${\rm Hα}$ through ${\rm Hε}$), we derive a nebular attenuation curve that is similar in shape to that of the Galactic extinction curve, suggesting that the dust covering fraction and absorption/scattering properties along the lines-of-sight to…
Paschen Jumps in Little Red Dots: Evidence for Nebular Continua
Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN)（宇宙黎明中心）；Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）；Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford（牛津大学物理系天体物理学）；School of Mathematics and Physics, Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast（贝尔法斯特女王大学数学与物理学院天体物理学研究中心）
We present a detailed analysis of 317 $2.0 \leq z \leq 2.7$ star-forming galaxies from the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey (KBSS). Using complementary spectroscopic observations with Keck/LRIS and Keck/MOSFIRE, as well as spectral energy distribution (SED) fits to broadband photometry, we examine the joint rest-UV and rest-optical properties of the same galaxies, including stellar and nebular dust attenuation, metallicity, and star formation rate (SFR). The inferred parameters of the stellar population (reddening, age, SFR, and stellar mass) are strongly dependent on the details of the assumed …
Cloudy-Maraston: Integrating nebular continuum and line emission with the Maraston stellar population synthesis models
Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation, University of Portsmouth（宇宙学与引力研究所，朴茨茅斯大学）；Astronomy Centre, University of Sussex（天文学中心，萨塞克斯大学）；Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst（天文学系，马萨诸塞大学阿默斯特分校）；Department of Physics, University of Oxford（物理系，牛津大学）
Nebular Emission Line Ratios in z~2-3 Star-Forming Galaxies with KBSS-MOSFIRE: Exploring the Impact of Ionization, Excitation, and Nitrogen-to-Oxygen Ratio
We present a joint analysis of rest-UV and rest-optical spectra obtained using Keck/LRIS and Keck/MOSFIRE for a sample of 62 star-forming galaxies at $z\sim2.3$. We divide our sample into 2 bins based on their location in the [OIII]/Hb vs. [NII]/Ha BPT diagram, and perform the first differential study of the rest-UV properties of massive ionizing stars as a function of rest-optical emission-line ratios. Fitting BPASS stellar population synthesis models, including nebular continuum emission, to our rest-UV spectra, we find that high-redshift galaxies offset towards higher [OIII]/Hb and [NII]/Ha…
We examine the diagnostic power of rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) nebular emission lines, and compare them to more commonly used rest-frame optical emission lines, using the test case of a single star-forming knot of the bright lensed galaxy RCSGA 032727-132609 at redshift z~1.7. This galaxy has complete coverage of all the major rest-frame UV and optical emission lines from Magellan/MagE and Keck/NIRSPEC. Using the full suite of diagnostic lines, we infer the physical properties: nebular electron temperature (T_e), electron density (n_e), oxygen abundance (log(O/H)), ionisation parameter (log(q)…
Stellar Absorption Line Analysis of Local Star-Forming Galaxies: The Relation Between Stellar Mass, Metallicity, Dust Attenuation and Star Formation Rate
Despite significant progress both observationally and theoretically, the origin of high-ionization nebular HeII emission in galaxies dominated by stellar photoionization remains unclear. Accretion-powered radiation from high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs) is still one of the leading proposed explanations for the missing $\mathrm{He^+}$-ionizing photons, but this scenario has yet to be conclusively tested. In this paper, we present nebular line predictions from a grid of photoionization models with input SEDs containing the joint contribution of both stellar atmospheres and a multi-color disk mode…
We use a sample of 706 galaxies, selected as [OII]$λ$3727 ([OII]) emitters in the Survey for High-$z$ Absorption Red and Dead Sources (SHARDS) on the CANDELS/GOODS-N field, to study the differential attenuation of the nebular emission with respect to the stellar continuum. The sample includes only galaxies with a counterpart in the infrared and $\mathrm{log}_{10}(M_{*}/\mathrm{M}_{\odot})$ $>$ 9, over the redshift interval 0.3 $\lesssim$ $z$ $\lesssim$ 1.5. Our methodology consists in the comparison of the star formation rates inferred from [OII] and H$α$ emission lines with a robust quantific…
We introduce VLT-MUSE observations of the central 2$'\times2'$ (30$\times$30 pc) of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The observations provide an unprecedented spectroscopic census of the massive stars and ionised gas in the vicinity of R136, the young, dense star cluster located in NGC 2070, at the heart of the richest star-forming region in the Local Group. Spectrophotometry and radial-velocity estimates of the nebular gas (superimposed on the stellar spectra) are provided for 2255 point sources extracted from the MUSE datacubes, and we present estimates of stellar radial v…
Evidence for Shallow Nebular Attenuation Curves and Patchy Dust Geometry at z~2 with Pa-beta/H-alpha Measurements from JWST-MegaScience Medium Band Photometry
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；Leiden University（莱顿大学）；Space Telescope Science Institute（太空望远镜科学研究所）；The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, Sorbonne Université（巴黎天体物理研究所，法国国家科学研究中心，索邦大学）；University of Pittsburgh（匹兹堡大学）；Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen（哥本哈根大学尼尔斯·玻尔研究所）
As deep spectroscopic campaigns extend to higher redshifts and lower stellar masses, the interpretation of galaxy spectra depends increasingly upon models for very young stellar populations. Here we present new HST/COS ultraviolet spectroscopy of seven nearby ($<120$ Mpc) star-forming regions hosting very young stellar populations ($\sim$ 4-20 Myr) with optical Wolf-Rayet stellar wind signatures, ideal laboratories in which to test these stellar models. We detect nebular C III] in all seven, but at equivalent widths uniformly $< 10$ Å. This suggests that even for very young stellar populations…
