Astronomy Tea Talk

  Dust-obscured galaxies dominate the cosmic star formation rate density at z>1, yet little is known about their stellar emission in the rest-frame UV/optical due to extreme attenuation.  Even after correcting for extinction, their starlight underestimates the total star formation rates of submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) by ~100 times.  How do we account for the missing luminosity?  Are our extinctions corrections not reliable for dust-obscured starbursts?  I'll discuss how I'm beginning to use recent Keck spectra (LRIS, DEIMOS and MOSFIRE, in the context of dusty galaxy redshift surveys) alongside new far-infrared datasets (from SCUBA-2 and Herschel) and an energy balance argument to address these questions.  The results could have interesting implications for calibrations of dust-extinction, thus the star formation rate density out to high-z.