Temperature Profiles and the Effect of AGN on Submillimeter Emission
  from BLAST Observations of Resolved Galaxies
  Over the course of two flights, the Balloon-borne Large Aperture
Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) made resolved maps of seven nearby (<25 Mpc)
galaxies at 250, 350, and 500 microns. During its June 2005 flight from Sweden,
BLAST observed a single nearby galaxy, NGC 4565. During the December 2006
flight from Antarctica, BLAST observed the nearby galaxies NGC 1097, NGC 1291,
NGC 1365, NGC 1512, NGC 1566, and NGC 1808. We fit physical dust models to a
combination of BLAST observations and other available data for the galaxies
observed by Spitzer. We fit a modified blackbody to the remaining galaxies to
obtain total dust mass and mean dust temperature. For the four galaxies with
Spitzer data, we also produce maps and radial profiles of dust column density
and temperature. We measure the fraction of BLAST detected flux originating
from the central cores of these galaxies and use this to calculate a "core
fraction," an upper limit on the "AGN fraction" of these galaxies. We also find
our resolved observations of these galaxies give a dust mass estimate 5-19
times larger than an unresolved observations would predict. Finally, we are
able to use these data to derive a value for the dust mass absorption
co-efficient of kappa = 0.29 +/-0.03 m^2 kg^-1 at 250 microns. This study is an
introduction to future higher-resolution and higher-sensitivity studies to be
conducted by Herschel and SCUBA-II.
