Dust in Dwarfs and Low Surface Brightness Galaxies

J. L. Hinz, M. J. Rieke, G. H. Rieke, P. S. Smith, K. Misselt, M. Blaylock, & K. D. Gordon 2008, in "The Second Annual Spitzer Science Center Conference: Infrared Diagnostics of Galaxy Evolution," (ASP Conf. Ser.), eds. by Ranga-Ram Chary, Harry I. Teplitz and Kartik Sheth. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 381, 153

We describe Spitzer images of a sample of dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies, using the high sensitivity and spatial resolution to explore the morphologies of dust in these galaxies. For the starbursting dwarf UGC 10445, we present a complete infrared spectral energy distribution and modeling of its individual dust components. We find that its diffuse cold (T=19 K) dust component extends beyond its near-infrared disk and speculate that the most plausible source of heating is ultraviolet photons from starforming complexes. We find that the mass of T=19 K dust in UGC 10445 is surprisingly large, with a lower limit of 3e6 M_solar. We explore the implications of having such a high dust content on the nature and evolution of the galaxy.

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