it indicates a correlation between dust-to-gas ratio and interstellar radiation field. Although the metallicity may also play a role in this correlation, we suggest that the dust optical depth could regulate the star formation activities, which govern the interstellar radiation field. We also mention the importance of submillimetre data in tracing the emission from highly shielded low-temperature dust.'
author:
- |
    Hiroyuki Hirashita$^{1}$[^1] and Tomohiro T. Ichikawa$^{2}$\
    $^1$ Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, P.O. Box 23-141, Taipei 10617, Taiwan\
    $^2$ Centre for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8577, Japan
date: 2009 March 3
title: 'Effects of dust abundance on the far-infrared colours of blue compact dwarf galaxies'
---

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dust, extinction — galaxies: dwarf — galaxies: evolution — galaxies: ISM — infrared: galaxies

Introduction
============

The far-infrared (FIR) emission from galaxies is often used to trace the star formation activities [@kennicutt98; @inoue00; @iglesias04]. Dust grains are the source of FIR emission, and the strong connection between FIR luminosity and star formation rate can be explained if the ultraviolet (UV) light from massive stars is the dominant source of dust heating. The FIR spectral energy distribution (SED) of dust grains reflects various information on the grains themselves and 