* Astronomy

Title: Dust reddening in star-forming galaxies
Authors: Ting Xiao, Tinggui Wang, Huiyuan Wang, Hongyan Zhou, HongLin Lu, Xiaobo Dong (USTC)

We present empirical relations between the global dust reddening and other physical galaxy properties including the Halpha luminosity, Halpha surface brightness, metallicity and axial ratio for star-forming disc galaxies. The study is based on a large sample of ~22 000 well-defined star-forming galaxies selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The reddening parameterised by colour excess E(B-V) is derived from the Balmer decrement. Besides the dependency of reddening on Halpha luminosity / surface brightness and gas phase metallicity, it is also correlated with the galaxy inclination, in the sense that edge-on galaxies are more attenuated than face-on galaxies at a give intrinsic luminosity. In light of these correlations, we present the empirical formulae of E(B-V) as a function of these galaxy properties, with a scatter of only 0.07 mag. The empirical relation can be reproduced if most dust attenuation to the HII region is due to diffuse background dust distributing in a disc thicker than that of HII region. The empirical formulae can be incorporated into semi-analytical models of galaxy formation and evolution to estimate the dust reddening and enable comparison with observations more practically.

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