TheIRASRevised Bright Galaxy Sample

Abstract

IRAS flux densities, redshifts, and infrared luminosities are reported for all sources identified in the IRAS Revised Bright Galaxy Sample (RBGS), a complete flux-limited survey of all extragalactic objects with total 60 lm flux density greater than 5.24 Jy, covering the entire sky surveyed by IRAS at Galactic latitudes |b| > 5 . The RBGS includes 629 objects, with median and mean sample redshifts of 0.0082 and 0.0126, respectively, and a maximum redshift of 0.0876. The RBGS supersedes the previous two-part IRAS Bright Galaxy Samples (BGS 1 +BGS 2 ), which were compiled before the final (Pass 3) calibration of the IRAS Level 1 Archive in 1990 May. The RBGS also makes use of more accurate and consistent automated methods to measure the flux of objects with extended emission. The RBGS contains 39 objects that were not present in the BGS 1 +BGS 2 , and 28 objects from the BGS 1 +BGS 2 have been dropped from RBGS because their revised 60 lm flux densities are not greater than 5.24 Jy. Comparison of revised flux measurements for sources in both surveys shows that most flux differences are in the range $5%-25%, although some faint sources at 12 and 25 lm differ by as much as a factor of 2. Basic properties of the RBGS sources are summarized, including estimated total infrared luminosities, as well as updates to cross identifications with sources from optical galaxy catalogs established using the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database. In addition, an atlas of images from the Digitized Sky Survey with overlays of the IRAS position uncertainty ellipse and annotated scale bars is provided for ease in visualizing the optical morphology in context with the angular and metric size of each object. The revised bolometric infrared luminosity function, (L ir ), for infrared-bright galaxies in the local universe remains best fit by a double power law, (L) / L , with = À0.6(AE0.1) and = À2.2(AE0.1) below and above the '' characteristic '' infrared luminosity L Ã ir $ 10 10:5 L , respectively. A companion paper provides IRAS High Resolution (HIRES) processing of over 100 RBGS sources where improved spatial resolution often provides better IRAS source positions or allows for deconvolution of close galaxy pairs.

Dusty star-forming galaxies at high redshift

“…The InfraRed Astronomy Satellite (IRAS; Neugebauer et al, 1984) was responsible for the discovery of these extremely bright extragalactic sources during its short lifetime in 1983. While close to 250,000 extragalactic sources were logged by IRAS over the entire sky, the subset of 'bright galaxies' became the most wellstudied infrared sources (629 of which make up the 'Revised Bright Galaxy Sample,' or RBGS; Sanders et al, 2003). Further populations of local infrared-bright galaxies were discovered by ISOPHOT aboard the ISO satellite in the mid-1990s (Lemke et al, 1996).…”

Probing the dust properties of galaxies up to submillimetre wavelengths

“…It possesses characteristics of an extreme starburst with L FIR ∼ 10 11 L (Sanders et al 2003), making it a luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) with a high star formation rate of ∼25 M yr −1 as determined from Hα, radio continuum, FIR and hard X-ray observations (Grimes et al 2007). Broadband images of Hα show three bright star-forming condensations with unrelaxed kinematic structure and faint extended shell structures in the outer regions of the galaxy, all suggesting an ongoing merger (Bergvall & Östlin 2002;Östlin et al 1999).…”

PAHs in the halo of NGC 5529

“…h Infrared fluxes at λ 12, 25, 60 and 100 µm, respectively. i From Sanders et al (2003). j Far infrared (FIR) and infrared (IR) luminosity, respectively, using the formalism of Sanders & Mirabel (1996) with their constant, C = 1, and L = 3.84 × 10 33 erg s −1 .…”