* Astronomy

Tune your radio: galaxies sing while forming stars

A team of astronomers led by Fatemeh Tabatabaei from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC), including scientists from two Max Planck institutes (MPIfR, Bonn and MPIA, Heidelberg), has measured the radio emission for a large sample of galaxies with the Effelsberg 100-m radio telescope at different wavelengths. These galaxies were selected from the KINGFISH sample previously observed in the infrared with the Herschel satellite. This allows for the first time a comparative study of a total of 52 spiral galaxies. A reliable method could be established to determine the star formation rate exclusively from radio data without including other spectral regimes.
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