The GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog 2 (GSWLC-2)

DOI

We study the dust attenuation curves of 230,000 individual galaxies in the local universe, ranging from quiescent to intensely star-forming systems, using GALEX, SDSS, and WISE photometry calibrated on the Herschel ATLAS. We use a new method of constraining SED fits with infrared luminosity (SED+LIR fitting), and parameterized attenuation curves determined with the CIGALE SED-fitting code. Attenuation curve slopes and UV bump strengths are reasonably well constrained independently from one another. We find that A_{lambda}/A_V attenuation curves exhibit a very wide range of slopes that are on average as steep as the curve slope of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The slope is a strong function of optical opacity. Opaque galaxies have shallower curves --in agreement with recent radiative transfer models. The dependence of slopes on the opacity produces an apparent dependence on stellar mass: more massive galaxies have shallower slopes. Attenuation curves exhibit a wide range of UV bump amplitudes, from none to Milky Way (MW)-like, with an average strength one-third that of the MW bump. Notably, local analogs of high-redshift galaxies have an average curve that is somewhat steeper than the SMC curve, with a modest UV bump that can be, to first order, ignored, as its effect on the near-UV magnitude is 0.1 mag. Neither the slopes nor the strengths of the UV bump depend on gas-phase metallicity. Functional forms for attenuation laws are presented for normal star-forming galaxies, high-z analogs, and quiescent galaxies. We release the catalog of associated star formation rates and stellar masses (GSWLC-2; GALEX-SDSS-WISE Legacy Catalog 2).

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/859/11/gswlc-a2 (*Shallow, "All-sky" catalog (GSWLC-A2; Covers 88% of SDSS))

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/859/11/gswlc-m2 (*Medium-deep catalog (GSWLC-M2; Covers 49% of SDSS))

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/859/11/gswlc-d2 (*Deep catalog (GSWLC-D2; Covers 7% of SDSS))

Cone search capability for table J/ApJ/859/11/gswlc-x2 (*Master catalog taking the deepest of GSWLC-A, M and D (GSWLC-X2; Covers 90% of SDSS))

Identifier
DOI http://doi.org/10.26093/cds/vizier/ba-tv-b
Source https://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/lp/custom/CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/859/11
Related Identifier https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/cat/J/ApJ/859/11
Related Identifier https://vizier.cds.unistra.fr/viz-bin/VizieR-2?-source=J/ApJ/859/11
Metadata Access http://dc.g-vo.org/rr/q/pmh/pubreg.xml?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_b2find&identifier=ivo://CDS.VizieR/J/ApJ/859/11
Provenance
Creator Salim S.; Boquien M.; Lee J.C.
Publisher CDS
Publication Year 2026
Rights https://cds.unistra.fr/vizier-org/licences_vizier.html
OpenAccess true
Contact CDS support team <cds-question(at)unistra.fr>
Representation
Resource Type Dataset; AstroObjects
Discipline Astrophysics and Astronomy; Cosmology; Galactic and extragalactic Astronomy; Interdisciplinary Astronomy; Natural Sciences; Observational Astronomy; Physics