We combine Planck HFI data at 857 , 545 , 353 and 217 GHz with data from WISE , Spitzer , IRAS and Herschel to investigate the properties of a well-defined , flux limited sample of local star-forming galaxies .
A 545 GHz flux density limit was chosen so that the sample is 80 % complete at this frequency , and the resulting sample contains a total of 234 local , star forming galaxies .
We investigate the dust emission and star formation properties of the sample via various models and calculate the local dust mass function .
Although single component modified black bodies fit the dust emission longward of 80 \mu m very well , with a median \beta = 1.83 , the known degeneracy between dust temperature and \beta also means that the spectral energy distributions are very well described by a dust component with dust emissivity index fixed at \beta = 2 and temperature in the range 10–25 K. Although a second , warmer dust component is required to fit shorter wavelength data , and contributes approximately a third of the total infrared emission , its mass is negligible .
No evidence is found for a very cold ( 6–10 K ) dust component .
The temperature of the cold dust component is strongly influenced by the ratio of the star formation rate to the total dust mass .
This implies , contrary to what is often assumed , that a significant fraction of even the emission from \sim 20 K dust is powered by ongoing star formation , whether or not the dust itself is associated with star forming clouds or ‘ cirrus ’ .
There is statistical evidence of a free-free contribution to the 217 GHz flux densities of \lesssim 20 \% .
We find a median dust-to-stellar mass ratio of 0.0046 ; and that this ratio is anti-correlated with galaxy mass .
There is good correlation between dust mass and atomic gas mass ( median M _ { d } / M _ { HI } = 0.022 ) , suggesting that galaxies that have more dust ( higher values of M _ { d } / M _ { * } ) have more interstellar medium in general .
Our derived dust mass function implies a mean dust mass density of the local Universe ( for dust within galaxies ) , of 7.0 \pm 1.4 \times 10 ^ { 5 } M _ { \odot } Mpc ^ { -3 } , significantly greater than that found in the most recent estimate using Herschel data .