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D.C. Jackson, E.D. Skillman, R.D. Gehrz, C.E. Woodward, E. Polomski (University of Minnesota)
We present Spitzer Space Telescope near-infrared imaging of the Local Group dwarf irregular galaxy WLM. IRAC images at 4.5 microns probe emission from the brightest stars, which are clumped into associations. We detect very little, if any, diffuse emission at 8.0 microns, that would be indicative of PAH features or hot dust. Optical data from the Local Group Survey (Massey et al. 2002) and from the Hubble Space Telescope Local Group Archive (Holtzman et al. 2003) are used to identify stellar populations. These are then spatially matched to sources in the near-infrared data to create spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from 0.5 to 8 microns of individual objects in WLM. We also detect new sources (e.g., AGB stars) in the IR that are either intrinsically very red, highly reddened, or both. These sources do not appear in images from either the Local Group Survey (I = 24, MI= -1) or HST (I = 26, MI = 1). Creating a complete census of these objects is critical to understanding the chemical evolution of galaxies since they are responsible for a significant fraction of their metal production.
This work is supported in part by NASA (JPL/SSC-1256406, 1215746)
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: djackson@astro.umn.edu
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 5
© 2004. The American Astronomical Society.