Dust and Star Formation in Galaxies: Not the Entire Story

The effects of dust1 are tangled with the star formation history (SFH) of galaxies with a high degree of degeneracy in the UV—NIR wavelength range. Disentangling and constraining the two (dust attenuation and SFH) is key to deriving accurate physical properties of galaxies (SFR, mass, etc.). Availability of restframe MIR/FIR (dust emission) data helps separating the two effects, although degeneracies are still present when large regions (> 1 kpc -> multiple stellar populations) or entire galaxies are modeled. The complexity of separating the two effects will be magnified by the difficulty of securing restframe dust emission data with ALMA for the vast surveys that will become available with the NGRST, Euclid, and JWST (at z>6). Impact decreases at lower metallicities and highest redshifts (shorter t’s). Past and ongoing efforts to help chart a map to address this issue are key for progress. Mainly, this is an issue of limiting the range of solutions with physical arguments.