De-redden the SEDs of star-forming galaxies
There are a variety of different dust extinction and attenuation curves available in the literature, such as the Milky Way, LMC, SMC or Calzetti curve. Only the latter curve is an attenuation curve suitable for de-reddening integrated light from galaxies, accounting for the potentially mixed geometry of stars+dust and the scatter of light into the line-of-sight by dust grains. It has therefore been the curve of choice for the last decade in galaxy evolution work. However, it was measured for starburst galaxies, not ordinary star-forming galaxies, and because of the expected different geometry and properties of dust in different environments we expect different attenuation curves to be applicable to starburst and star-forming galaxies.
In Wild et al. 2011b I measured empirically the shape of the attenuation curves in star-forming galaxies, from the UV to NIR, as a function of galaxy properties. These attenuation curves can, in exactly the same way as the Calzetti curve, be used to de-redden SEDs from star-forming galaxies.
Download the IDL code here. A version in Python has been written and kindly made available to everyone by Simona Bekeraitė at the AIP, download it here. Please cite Wild et al. 2011 ADS.
