DustPedia - A Definitive Study of Cosmic Dust in the Local Universe
  The European Space Agency has invested heavily in two cornerstones missions;
Herschel and Planck. The legacy data from these missions provides us with an
unprecedented opportunity to study cosmic dust in galaxies so that we can
answer fundamental questions about, for example: the origin of the chemical
elements, physical processes in the interstellar medium (ISM), its effect on
stellar radiation, its relation to star formation and how this relates to the
cosmic far infrared background. In this paper we describe the DustPedia
project, which is enabling us to develop tools and computer models that will
help us relate observed cosmic dust emission to its physical properties
(chemical composition, size distribution, temperature), to its origins (evolved
stars, super novae, growth in the ISM) and the processes that destroy it (high
energy collisions and shock heated gas). To carry out this research we will
combine the Herschel/Planck data with that from other sources of data,
providing observations at numerous wavelengths (< 41) across the spectral
energy distribution, thus creating the DustPedia database. To maximise our
spatial resolution and sensitivity to cosmic dust we limit our analysis to 4231
local galaxies (v < 3000 km/s) selected via their near infrared luminosity
(stellar mass). To help us interpret the data we have developed a new physical
model for dust (THEMIS), a new Bayesian method of fitting and interpreting
spectral energy distributions (HerBIE) and a state-of-the-art Monte Carlo
photon tracing radiative transfer model (SKIRT). In this the first of the
DustPedia papers we describe the project objectives, data sets used and provide
an insight into the new scientific methods we plan to implement.
