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V. Andersen, S. Chin, L. Duvall, J. Laska (ASMS)
At low redshift, the most straightforward estimate of a galaxy's current rate of massive star formation is obtained from its H\alpha emission. At higher redshift, where H\alpha is often shifted into the near infrared and thus difficult to observe, measurements at radio wavelengths are often used to estimate the rate of massive star formation. In order to track the rate of star formation in galaxies as a function of lookback time, it is obviously important to place the star formation rates estimated by these two different techniques on a consistent scale. As a first step in doing this, we present an analysis of the correlation between radio and H\alpha luminosities for nearby, star forming galaxies, taking special care to evaluate the effects of a galaxy's internal extinction, absolute magnitude, and morphological type on the derived correlation.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: vande@asms.net