Infrared Galaxies in the Nearby Universe

Abstract

We used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 5 (DR5) to study the morphological properties of 1137 nearby infrared (IR) galaxies, most of which are brighter than 15.9 mag in r-band. This sample was drawn from a cross-correlation of the Infra-Red Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) point source catalog redshift survey with DR5 at zlesssim 0.08. Based on this IR galaxy sample, we constructed five volume-limited sub-samples with IR luminosity ranging from 109.5L⊙ to 1012L⊙. By deriving the IR luminosity functions (LF) for different morphological types, we found that normal spiral galaxies are the dominant population below LIR~8×1010 L⊙; while the fraction of barred spiral galaxies increases with increasing IR luminosity and becomes dominant in spiral galaxies beyond LIRsime5×1010L⊙. As the IR luminosity decreases, the IR galaxies become more compact and have lower stellar masses. The analysis also shows that normal spiral galaxies give the dominant contribution to the total comoving IR energy density in the nearby universe, while, in contrast, the contribution from peculiar galaxies is only 39%.