Multi-frequency Studies of Star Forming Galaxies or the Power of Public Databases

Galaxies represent important building blocks in the Universe. Understanding their formation and evolution processes enables us to understand the evolution of the Universe as a whole. We have many questions to ask. How did star formation processes evolve? What are the properties of the galaxies hosting the majority of the star formation? In order to address these questions, we must use publicly available, multi-frequency data ranging covering extended portions of the sky from the ultraviolet (UV) to the far infrared (FIR). To access these data we utilized large public databases which play a crucial role in modern astronomy. The databases allowed us to construct and analyze samples of actively star forming galaxies at an epoch where the Universe was only 2.5-6 billion years old. This was also the time when the global star formation rate in the Universe was at its peak. For this project, we constructed automated selection procedures correlating large data sets recorded at different frequencies. These procedures allowed us to efficiently correlate multi-frequency us to efficiently correlate multi-frequency information for several hundred thousand galaxies which resulted in master object catalogs useful for analysis. As a next step we applied well tested color selection criteria to the master catalogs to separate the star forming galaxies from other galaxy populations. These selection criteria are based on model predictions for actively star forming galaxies at this epoch. The data allowed us to estimate the distances of the sample galaxies by correlating them with extended libraries of galaxy models. The data will also form the basis for future investigations which will include correlation with galaxy models to estimate further properties of these actively star forming galaxies including masses, ages, and star formation rates