Type: Poster
Session: Posters (Monday & Tuesday)
Author: Clayton Robertson

Abstract: Extragalactic dust attenuation has fundamentally relied on the Balmer decrement (Hα/Hβ) for decades. We use a unique method to map attenuation in overlapping (occulting) galaxy pairs by exploiting the light lost in the overlap region and the symmetry of these galaxy pairs. Here, we independently measure both the attenuation (Av) and (Hα/Hβ) of an optimal occulting galaxy pair: VV 191 (z = 0.0514 and z = 0.0513 for the spiral foreground, VV 191b and background elliptical galaxy, VV 191a, respectively). We use observations from the Hubble Space Telescope F606W wide camera filter to map Av and integral field unit (IFU) observations from the George and Cynthia Mitchell Spectrograph (GCMS)/Visible Integral field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS-P) of the McDonald Observatory from the University of Texas to map Hα/Hβ. We independently compute Av and Hα/Hβ for direct comparison and to observe the influence Hα/Hβ and Av in occulting galaxy pairs have on each other. Observations with VV 191 will give insight on more occulting galaxy pairs, which occur often with dwarf galaxies, using space-based imaging and ground-based spectroscopy.