The Spatial Distribution of Dust Extinction Through Spiral Disks

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Hst Proposal Id #6807 Galaxies &Amp, Clusters

Scientific paper

I propose WFPC2 imaging in V and I of a special galaxy pair(UGC 5041) in which the light of an early-typegalaxy is seen through the disk of a foreground spiral. Thesesystems provide an excellent opportunity to map with highspatial resolution the dust extinction, tau_Lambda(vecR),light passing through a galaxy disk. Knowing the extinctiondistribution within galaxies is important (1) for interpretingthe broad-band colors of galaxies, (2) for the statistics ofgravitationally lensed objects and (3) for estimating thetotal hydrogen content of the damped LyAlpha absorberpopulation. Ground-based observations of these two galaxypairs indicate optical depths, averaged over (600 pc)^2resolution elements, of tau_ V=0.3-1.2. However, each 1^resolution element is much larger than the width of dust lanesseen in more nearby galaxies and therefore it contains areasof both much larger and much smaller optical depth. Theproposed HST observations provide the unprecedentedopportunity to probe the dust extinction over a contiguousarea with a resolution (~ 60pc) comparable to the width of theprominent dust lanes. Consequently, the data would provide agreatly improved estimate of which portion of a spiral galaxydisk is opaque (Tau_Lambda>> 1) or transparent (Tau_Lambda<<1). Compared to ground-based observations, the high resolutionWFPC2 observations will also increase the contrast of thesmall dust lanes and patches by nearly two orders ofmagnitude.

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