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J.D. Goldader (U. Pennsylvania), G. Meurer, T.M. Heckman, Seibert Mark (JHU), D.B. Sanders (U. Hawaii), D. Calzetti (STScI), C. Steidel (Caltech)
Ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) are the most likely local counterparts to the sub-mm selected galaxies discovered at high redshifts. We report results of our HST program to obtain vacuum-UV (1457 and 2364Å) images of a sample of local ultraluminous infrared galaxies. These can be compared to the observed optical wavelength images of the high-z galaxies, which sample the rest-frame UV emission of the sources. Our sample includes the ULIRGs IRAS 08572+3915, Mrk 273, IRAS 15250+3609, Arp 220, and IRAS 19254-7245. We present for the first time images of the two slightly less luminous infrared galaxies in our program, Arp 193 and VV 114.
A significant result is that while UV light is seen in all our sample galaxies, the brightest UV emission is generally displaced by at least several hundred pc from the near-IR and radio peaks. In the ULIRGs, 90 percent or more of the UV light comes from extended emission and star clusters outside the central 500 pc radius. Even including corrections for reddening based on the UV colors, the observed UV light accounts for at most a small fraction of the bolometric luminosities. We will present predicted optical/near-IR colors and magnitudes for the ULIRGs at high-z, and compare these to the observed properties of identified counterparts to sub-mm selected galaxies. This work is funded by a GO grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: jdgoldad@dept.physics.upenn.edu