Cold dust in galaxies

This paper presents 350-1100-micron continuum observations of the central regions of 11 spiral galaxies. Combining the submillimeter fluxes with IRAS data, it is found that the 60-1100-micron energy distributions of these galaxies can be well fitted by thermal emission from dust at a single temperature (T about 30-50 K). No direct evidence is found for the cold (T less than about 20 K) dust expected if dust is being heated by the interstellar radiation field of a normal galaxy. Estimates of the total mass of interstellar matter in these galaxies are lower than those estimated from CO 1-0 line measurements