The dusty ultraviolet haloes of edge-on galaxies

The ultraviolet light from edge-on spiral galaxies may reveal both the height of the star-forming disk and the presence of high-latitude dust by reflection. Using high-resolution UV data from the XMM-Newton and Swift Observatories, we generate vertical profiles for each galaxy in our sample to measure the vertical scale height z0. We compare these UV scale height parameters to the star formation rates of our nearby edge-on galaxies. Our aim is to infer the presence of dust scattered from the plane of the disk and to investigate any relationship between the stellar mass or star-formation rate of a galaxy and the amount of UV scattered by dust in it’s halo.