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E. F. Bell, K. D. Gordon, R. C. Kennicutt, Jr., D. Zaritsky (Steward Observatory)
One of the most exciting developments in extragalactic astronomy in the last few years has been the debate over the star formation history of the Universe. Many estimates have been primarily based on rest-frame far-ultraviolet (FUV) fluxes. In the local Universe, a tight correlation between FUV attenuation and UV color has been derived for starburst galaxies by Calzetti et al.: this correlation is often used to correct FUV-based star formation rates of distant galaxies.
We present evidence that the tight starburst-derived correlation between FUV attenuation and reddening is violated in the simplest of star-forming environments: HII regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Combining this result with those from Meurer et al., we conclude that no single relation between FUV attenuation and reddening is applicable to all star-forming systems.
In addition, we present preliminary work on the FUV attenuation and reddening in the LMC as a whole, and address whether or not the LMC adheres to the Calzetti et al. attenuation-reddening correlation.
The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: ebell@as.arizona.edu