Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2007-11-14
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
10 pages 7 figures summitted to MNRAS
Scientific paper
10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.12881.x
We explore the prospects of predicting emission line features present in galaxy spectra given broad-band photometry alone. There is a general consent that colours, and spectral features, most notably the 4000 A break, can predict many properties of galaxies, including star formation rates and hence they could infer some of the line properties. We argue that these techniques have great prospects in helping us understand line emission in extragalactic objects and might speed up future galaxy redshift surveys if they are to target emission line objects only. We use two independent methods, Artifical Neural Neworks (based on the ANNz code) and Locally Weighted Regression (LWR), to retrieve correlations present in the colour N-dimensional space and to predict the equivalent widths present in the corresponding spectra. We also investigate how well it is possible to separate galaxies with and without lines from broad band photometry only. We find, unsurprisingly, that recombination lines can be well predicted by galaxy colours. However, among collisional lines some can and some cannot be predicted well from galaxy colours alone, without any further redshift information. We also use our techniques to estimate how much information contained in spectral diagnostic diagrams can be recovered from broad-band photometry alone. We find that it is possible to classify AGN and star formation objects relatively well using colours only. We suggest that this technique could be used to considerably improve redshift surveys such as the upcoming FMOS survey and the planned WFMOS survey.
Sodr'e L. Jr.
Abdalla Filipe B.
Ferreras Ignacio
Lahav Ofer
Mateus Abilio
No associations
LandOfFree
Predicting spectral features in galaxy spectra from broad-band photometry does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Predicting spectral features in galaxy spectra from broad-band photometry, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Predicting spectral features in galaxy spectra from broad-band photometry will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-530717