Mapping dust through emission and absorption in nearby galaxies
  Dust has long been identified as a barrier to measuring inherent galaxy
properties. However, the link between dust and attenuation is not
straightforward and depends on both the amount of dust and its distribution.
Herschel imaging of nearby galaxies undertaken as part of the KINGFISH project
allows us to map the dust as seen in emission with unprecedented sensitivity
and ~1 kpc resolution. We present here new optical integral field unit
spectroscopy for eight of these galaxies that provides complementary 100-200 pc
scale maps of the dust attenuation through observation of the reddening in both
the Balmer decrement and the stellar continuum. The stellar continuum
reddening, which is systematically less than that observed in the Balmer
decrement, shows no clear correlation with the dust, suggesting that the
distribution of stellar reddening acts as a poor tracer of the overall dust
content. The brightest HII regions are observed to be preferentially located in
dusty regions, and we do find a correlation between the Balmer line reddening
and the dust mass surface density for which we provide an empirical relation.
Some of the high-inclination systems in our sample exhibit high extinction, but
we also find evidence that unresolved variations in the dust distribution on
scales smaller than 500 pc may contribute to the scatter in this relation. We
caution against the use of integrated A_V measures to infer global dust
properties.
