Global dust attenuation in disc galaxies: strong variation with specific star formation and stellar mass, and the importance of sample selection

Abstract

We study the relative dust attenuation-inclination relation in 78,721 nearby galaxies using the axis ratio dependence of optical-NIR colour, as measured by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). In order to avoid to the greatest extent possible attenuation-driven biases, we carefully select galaxies using dust attenuation-independent near- and mid-IR luminosities and colours. Relative u-band attenuation between face-on and edge-on disc galaxies along the star forming main sequence varies from ~0.55 mag up to ~1.55 mag. The strength of the relative attenuation varies strongly with both specific star formation rate and galaxy luminosity (or stellar mass). The dependence of relative attenuation on luminosity is not monotonic, but rather peaks at $M_{3.4\mu m} \approx -21.5$, corresponding to $M_* \approx 3\times 10^{10}M_{Sun}$. This behavior stands seemingly in contrast to some older studies; we show that older works failed to reliably probe to higher luminosities, and were insensitive to the decrease in attenuation with increasing luminosity for the brightest star-forming discs. Back-of-the-envelope scaling relations predict the strong variation of dust optical depth with specific star formation rate and stellar mass. More in-depth comparisons using the scaling relations to model the relative attenuation require the inclusion of star-dust geometry to reproduce the details of these variations (especially at high luminosities), highlighting the importance of these geometrical effects.