IR and UV star formation in ACCEPT BCGs

The BCGs are from a heterogeneous but uniformly characterized sample, the Archive of Chandra Cluster Entropy Profile Tables (ACCEPT), of X-ray galaxy clusters from the Chandra X-ray telescope archive with published gas temperature, density, and entropy profiles. We use archival Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), Spitzer Space Telescope, and Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) observations to assemble spectral energy distributions (SEDs) and colors for BCGs.

We establish a mean near-UV (NUV) to 2MASS K color of 6.59+/-0.34 for quiescent BCGs. We use this mean color to quantify the UV excess associated with star formation in the active BCGs. We use both fits to a template of an evolved stellar population and library of starburst models and mid-IR star formation relations to estimate the obscured star formation rates (SFRs).