Publication: The current star-formation rate of the local universe
Loading...
Official URL
Full text at PDC
Publication Date
1995-12-10
Advisors (or tutors)
Editors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
American Astronomical Society
Abstract
The Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) survey is a long-term project aimed at finding and analyzing star-forming galaxies detected by their Hα emission in Schmidt objective-prism plates. The instrumental setup limits the volume of the universe surveyed to a redshift z ≲ 0.045. So far we have discovered several hundred emission-line galaxies (ELGs) undergoing star formation at a wide range of levels. Analyzing a complete sample of ELGs from the UCM survey, we have computed the Hα luminosity function for the star-forming galaxies in the surveyed volume of the universe. A Schechter function provides a good fit to the H_α luminosity function with the following parameters: α = -1.3 ± 0.2, L^*(H_α) = 10^42.15±0.08 ergs s^-1, and φ^* = 10^-3.2±0.2 Mpc^3 for H_0 = 50 km s^-1 Mpc^-1. Integrating over the full range of luminosities, we obtain an H_α luminosity density of 10^39.1±0.2 ergs s^-1 Mpc^-3. Using the H_α emission as a star formation rate (SFR) estimator, this translates into a SFR density for the local universe of 0.013_−0.005^+0.007 M_☉ yr^-1 Mpc^-3 in star-forming galaxies with EW(H_α + [N_II]) > 10 Å and z lesssim 0.045 for a Scalo initial mass function. This is the first observational determination of this quantity, which will provide a direct test of current galaxy formation and evolution models.
Description
© 1995. The American Astronomical Society.
We thank S. White, A. G. Vitores, O. Alonso, J. Gorgas, and N. Cardiel for their many valuable comments. This work was supported in part by the Spanish Programa Sectorial de Promoción del Conocimiento under grant PB93-456. A. A. S. acknowledges generous financial support from the Royal Society.
UCM subjects
Unesco subjects
Keywords
Citation
Aragón Salamanca, A. 1995, in ASP Conf. Ser., Fresh Views on Elliptical Galaxies, ed. A. Buzzoni, A. Renzini, & A. Serrano (San Francisco: ASP), in press
Boroson, T. A., Salzer, J. J., & Trotter, A. 1993, ApJ, 412, 524
Broadhurst, T. J., Ellis, R. S., & Glazebrook, K. 1992, Nature, 355, 55
Bruzual, G., & Charlot, S. 1993, ApJ, 405, 538
Cole, S., Aragón Salamanca, A., Frenk, C. S., Navarro, J., & Zepf, E. 1994, MNRAS, 271, 781
Colless, M. 1995, in Wide Field Spectroscopy and the Distant Universe, ed. S. Maddox & A. Aragón Salamanca (Singapore: World Scientific), 263
Ellis, R. S., Colless, M., Broadhurst, T. J., Heyl, J., & Glazebrook, K. 1995, MNRAS, submitted
Gallagher, J. S., Bushouse, H., & Hunter, D. A. 1989, AJ, 97, 700
Gallagher, J. S., & Gibson, S. J. 1993, in Panchromatic View of Galaxies, ed. G. Hensler, C. Theis, & J. S. Gallagher (Gif-sur-Yvette: Editions Frontières), 207
Gallego, J. 1995, PASP, 107, 708
Gallego, J., Zamorano, J., Rego, M., Alonso, O., & Vitores, A. G. 1995a, A&AS, in press
Gallego, J., Zamorano, J., Rego, M., & Vitores, A. G. 1995b, ApJ, submitted
Huchra, J. P., & Sargent, W. L. W. 1973, ApJ, 186, 433
Kauffmann, G., White, S. D. M., & Guiderdoni, B. 1993, MNRAS, 264, 201
Kennicutt, R. C. 1983, ApJ, 272, 54
———. 1992, ApJ, 388, 310
Koo, D. C., & Kron, R. G. 1992, ARA&A, 30, 613
Lilly, S. J., Tresse, L., Hammer, F., Crampton, D., & Le Fevre, O. 1995, ApJ, 455, 108
Mobasher, B., Sharples, R. M., & Ellis, R. S. 1993, MNRAS, 263, 560
Rego, M., Cordero, M., Zamorano, J., & Gallego, J. 1993, AJ, 105, 427
Rego, M., Zamorano, J., & González Riestra, R. 1989, A&AS, 79, 443
Salzer, J. J. 1989, ApJ, 347, 152
Scalo, J. M. 1986, Fundam. Cosmic Phys., 11, 1
Schechter, P. 1976, ApJ, 203, 297
Schmidt, M. 1968, ApJ, 151, 393
Songaila, A., Cowie, L. L., Hu, E. M., & Gardner, J. P. 1994, ApJS, 94, 461
Vitores, A. G. 1995, PASP, 107, 404
Vitores, A. G., Zamorano, J., Rego, M., Alonso, O., & Gallego, J. 1995a, A&AS, submitted
———. 1995b, A&A, submitted
Zamorano, J., Gallego, J., Rego, M., Vitores, A. G., & Alonso, O. 1995, ApJS, submitted
Zamorano, J., Gallego, J., Rego, M., Vitores, A. G., González Riestra, R., & Rodríguez Caderot, G. 1994, ApJS, 95, 387
Zamorano, J., Rego, M., Gallego, J., Vitores, A. G., & González Riestra, R. 1992, AJ, 104, 1000
Zamorano, J., Rego, M., González Riestra, R., & Rodríguez, G. 1990, A&AS, 170, 353